Moments of Clarity

Thursday 2/16 - Swamp Rabbit with some Elevation

2012-02-16T19:33:00.002-05:00

Today started out as a kinda dreary day. After spin class AND swimming yesterday and the nice weather we had, it was wet and a bit chilly to start the day off. I brought my bike stuff with the hopes of a ride this afternoon.

By about 3pm the rain had subsided, so we got a chance to head out on the Swamp Rabbit trail. We got up near Paris Mountain, and instead of taking a left and climbing the mountain, we went right to go around the base. The end result is about as much elevation (if not a little bit more) even though we didn't climb the mountain. Instead of having a 6% climb for 2.2 miles, you get rolling hills with up to a 12% incline. It's a good training ground, as I can do near intervals on some of the roads, but it definitely takes a bit out of me.

About halfway through dreamland my knee started to bug me some. With my history of knee issues, I know to listen to what my knee is telling me. Even though the weather is supposed to really good tomorrow (and a crummy weekend) I'm thinking I need to cool it and let my knee rest some and just do a spin class on Saturday. My knee isn't bugging me unless I put out a lot of effort, so as long as I'm careful I should be okay. I just know better than to exhaust and overwork knees.

Wednesday 2/15 - Cycling and Swimming

2012-02-15T20:23:00.000-05:00

5:30 rolled around again this morning, and somehow I managed to get up and make it to the gym for another cycle class. I dialed the gear up to "11" and went through the course. Lori does a fantastic job with the class, and I was totally spent by the end of it, feeling like I need a hose to clean up the bike from all the sweat. I did have to take it easy the last ~4 minutes tho, as my right knee was getting really sore. The one thing that I learned long ago is that when you knee is talking you have to listen. Not listening to your knees is a recipe for a lot of pain and a lot more downtime.

So after work I met up with my wife back at the gym, and we hit the pool. It took a little bit this evening to get a pair of lanes, but eventually we were able to be in the pool together and had a chance to get a few laps. I managed to complete 3 laps without completely gassing out today, so that's a good thing. Hopefully in a week or two I'll get to the point where I can add a 4th lap in. It feels a little embarrassing that I end up with no energy and sore arms so quickly in the pool. The awesome thing is how much both my wife and I enjoy it, it's definitely an exercise we can schedule to do together more.

Tomorrow should be interesting because the weather is hopefully going to clear by early afternoon so we can get a good ride in. Since the weather is rather iffy for the rest of the week, we have to get in rides wherever we can.

Tuesday 2/14 - The Valentine's day workout

2012-02-14T21:53:00.000-05:00

Nothing really exciting marks today, outside of the fact that Rob Dempsey took a few minutes to talk about my Rob's Big Losers blog on HIS Radio this morning. The part that I posted up was the same part I quoted in my blog here about yesterday, and he really had some good ideas on it that were a lot of good common sense. I cannot rely on others to determine my fitness and health, I have to make it happen. If there's going to be something provided at lunch where I question if a healthy option exists, I need to make sure I have a healthy option with me. These are the changes to my overall lifestyle that I have to reconcile, and determine where things like Pizza fit into my life going forward.

You can Listen to Rob talk about my blog entry

After that, I had a coworker come by and offer me support, bringing an orange and tell me "no pizza". He happened to be in the same meeting today, and we were able to get salads instead of the pizza. I was really pleased at the better option that became available.

I went to the gym this evening and met up with several of my team mates for Rob's Big Losers. Tera is having a tough time, as she's struggling with an injury to her knee that is limiting her workouts for at least a few weeks. I'm praying for healing on her knee, and comfort for her while it heals. It was good to see so many RBL shirts in the gym, it really lifts me up and I know it is inspiring to others. The employees at the Y are really excited to see us in there, and I think it gets them inspired to see us putting forth the effort.

My workout tonight was rather simple - I did an upper body workout on the machines, and spent some time on the "Beast" machines (elliptical stride machines). I felt good afterwards, and on at least one machine I worked my arms to exhaustion, to the point where I couldn't finish the last rep completely (got to 11 out of 12 on the rep before I had to take a break and finish the last one). I'm hoping that by adding more core and upper body workouts to the mix I can keep from hitting a plateau for too long.

Monday 2/13 - Attack of the Bla's

2012-02-14T08:43:00.000-05:00

I'm starting out my blog from yesterday not only a day late, but swiping a part of an email that I sent to the rest of my Rob's Big Losers team.

Yesterday was a tough day for me: no energy, low willpower, lots of hunger. I realized this morning I had totally forgotten to make sure I had fruits in my diet. I think this is the first day since the challenge started where I had left out at least some fruit from my diet, so I'm not sure if that made a difference in my mood and energy or not (my initial guess is yes). Today is going to be a challenge because I have a lot of temptations in front of me, including a meeting where pizza is going to be served as "lunch". It's going to take a lot to be social with it and not overdo it.

As you can see, it wasn't an easy day for me yesterday. I started out with way too few calories, tried to be good through my morning snack and lunch, and by about 3pm I could tell things were not going to go well. I powered through my afternoon snack and the rest of work, and had a light cycling trip (I'm going to call it a recovery ride). Strava shows it to be an "easy" ride, but honestly it was rough on me to keep up on a pace that typically is a stroll in the park. Now, on the fair side of that, I was keeping my cadence up and trying to keep my heart rate down on purpose during the trip, but I was constantly fighting fatigue and lack of willpower and energy.

I got home last night and I was tired and hungry. Christy didn't have dinner done quite yet, so I sat down and ended up having some crackers with pepper jelly on them. After helping out with getting dinner finished, I made sure to make at least half of my meal the side dish (a really yummy warm Zucchini salad with corn, tomatoes and black beans) and tried to be good with the fajitas. I was under my calorie count, even with the Chocolate covered espresso beans for dessert.

I'm going to try to keep my fruit intake higher, especially in my morning and afternoon snacks, and see if I can keep these bla's away. They definitely allow the enemy to attack my self confidence and energy levels, and make my willpower weaken. It's easy to get veggies into almost any meal, but adding fruits can be tricky. I like fruit, but it's not something I instinctively reach for when I'm not consciously thinking about it yet. I'm going to have to strive to work better on that.

What exactly does a temple look like?

2012-02-13T09:55:00.000-05:00

I know that the image that is always brought up is that our bodies are a temple, and I've always struggled some with that image. I mean, what exactly does a temple look like? Typically they are granite or some other stone or concrete material, designed to be large and have stained glass or some other ornate fixtures around them. They also typically have pillars inside or outside of them, and are designed to hold a host of people in a grand fashion. Even going back to the days of Moses, the temple was in a tent. My imagery with that would be more of what we today equate to a circus-style tent (being large and made of pieces of other cloth, with a main shaft to hold the center of the tent up). How in the world am I to make my body into a temple?

1 Jesus spoke to them again in parables, saying: 2 “The kingdom of heaven is like a king who prepared a wedding banquet for his son. 3He sent his servants to those who had been invited to the banquet to tell them to come, but they refused to come.

⁴ “Then he sent some more servants and said, ‘Tell those who have been invited that I have prepared my dinner: My oxen and fattened cattle have been butchered, and everything is ready. Come to the wedding banquet.’

⁵ “But they paid no attention and went off—one to his field, another to his business. ⁶The rest seized his servants, mistreated them and killed them. ⁷ The king was enraged. He sent his army and destroyed those murderers and burned their city.

⁸ “Then he said to his servants, ‘The wedding banquet is ready, but those I invited did not deserve to come. ⁹ So go to the street corners and invite to the banquet anyone you find.’¹⁰ So the servants went out into the streets and gathered all the people they could find, the bad as well as the good, and the wedding hall was filled with guests.

¹¹ “But when the king came in to see the guests, he noticed a man there who was not wearing wedding clothes. ¹² He asked, ‘How did you get in here without wedding clothes, friend?’ The man was speechless.¹³ “Then the king told the attendants, ‘Tie him hand and foot, and throw him outside, into the darkness, where there will be weeping and gnashing of teeth.’

14 “For many are invited, but few are chosen.”

Matthew 22:1-14 (NIV)

One of the big changes for me with that imagery was to change the image that I'm thinking about. Our pastor a couple of weeks ago brought up the imagery of the wedding feast, with Christ as the Bridegroom standing there welcoming the Church as his Bride. Timing-wise, it was interesting because we had just celebrated our 14th wedding anniversary, and I had found some of our wedding photos while unpacking from the move. One of the strongest things that I remember from our wedding was how much we committed to preparing ourselves spiritually, mentally and physically for marriage. We went to marriage counseling with our pastor, an engaged encounter weekend, and dieted so we would look our best for the wedding. Honestly, I look at the pictures of myself from our wedding and I believe I looked about the best I have in the past 20 years during that day. I don't believe it's just because of the dieting, but because of why I was doing those things. I was dedicated to being prepared for the life experience that I was going through, and preparing myself for the life long journey with the woman of my dreams, the person that God had prepared to be my companion throughout life.

What it comes down to was a question for me: If I was willing to spend SO much effort for the preparation to spend this life with the person that God has prepared for me, shouldn't I spend as much effort preparing myself for the time when I go home with Christ? To me, the question of how to prepare myself to be traveling with God should be just as important as preparing myself for an earthly marriage, and the imagery put forth in the scripture works so well. When I'm invited to the feast in the Kingdom of heaven, will I be wearing wedding clothes and be chosen? I know that I am not worthy of the feast on my own merit, but by the saving grace of Christ alone. Even with that, should I not prepare myself as much spiritually, mentally and physically for the wedding banquet as I did for my earthly wedding? If I do not, am I putting myself, my own pride, my beautiful bride, or my own self worth ahead of Christ in my heart?

Sunday 2/12 - Tough, but not a Sufferfest

2012-02-12T19:36:00.001-05:00

When I woke up this morning, my phone informed me that it was 19 out. Winter finally decided to chill us out a little bit. That said, it's Sunday, and that means Church and then a bike ride in the afternoon. I got to the meeting spot a little before 3, and a grand total of 2 other people showed up. This was both a good thing and a bad thing, as the two folks that showed up I had riden with before (thus I knew they were strong riders), but I also knew they wouldn't just leave me sucking wind trying to catch up. It was cold, and a bit windy, but it was a really good ride.

From the statistics over at Strava, I averaged a better pace and kept my heart rate down better than last week. The other side that you will see is that all of the Personal Records I accomplished last week still stand, but I was in second place for all of the same segments. What I'm taking away from that is that while I didn't put forth the monstrous effort on the known segments today, in the places in between I was able to properly rest and efficiently climb and use my energy instead of just trying to hang on for dear life on the group last week.

I also think that I will start seeing a lot of benefit from going to the cycle class as well as the gym in general in the coming weeks, where efforts like last week start to wane and I have more realistic challenges on this particular ride. I've lost about 12lbs so far on this journey, and while I still have around 40lbs more to go before I get near my "goal" weight, I hope that I'll start seeing the benefits of the lighter me in my ability to manage some of these routes. I cannot imagine strapping another 12lbs onto my stomach and attempting to ride!

One of the things I'm most proud of is the 2nd place in the Scuffletown Sprint Zone. This is a stretch where I have tended to hang on with the group for dear life, and a place where I really challenge myself. Today it was just 3 of us, and that typically means a slower pace than when it's a group of 10 or 12. That said, we all took turns pulling through the Sprint Zone, and as such I came out with a really strong score. I was really happy that in the section where I managed to pull I was able to push the speed up to almost 30mph and really give John a good shot to finish strong.

Saturday 2/11 - Cycle Class

2012-02-11T17:51:00.000-05:00

This morning started out early, with a trip to the gym for a cycle class. I was a bit worried, as my left calf was a bit tight last night. It was a good class, and I averaged 200watts for 67minutes, totaling 775cal burned. I was able to follow the entire routine without having to back off. Hopefully I can slowly up my base gear and build some extra cycling endurance. I treated myself to a "Hulk" smoothie at the gym as my breakfast after class, which was really yummy!

My oldest turned 13 yesterday, so she spent about an hour with the trainers learning all of the equipment at the gym, and she got her own badge today. When we were done we went down to the bike shop and she tried out a new hybrid bike. We took a 5 mile journey on the Swamp Rabbit to see how it felt for her, and she really enjoyed it. After paying for the bike, and getting Christy some new running shoes, we had lunch and headed home.

It was a long day between the two activities, but we all had a lot of energy to take care of the day.

Thursday 2/9 - Restorative Yoga

2012-02-09T21:05:00.000-05:00

Today was my weigh in day, as well are our Team Meeting for Rob's Big Losers. This week Jeff (the Wellness Director) set up to have a private Yoga class for us to take together. Before class started, I had to weigh in. At weigh in time I was at 245lbs, which is down 4lbs for the week and 12 lbs since the program started almost 3 weeks ago. This is really good for me, and it keeps me on track to be in the 220's, which is where I want to be at the end of this 12 week program. It's not the end of my journey, but it'll be a great start to getting where I want to be.

After my weigh in, it was time for Yoga. For being mostly stretching exercises, it is a pretty rough workout. Anyone that isn't sweaty and tired at the end is either in really good shape already, or isn't doing it right. We spent about 40 minutes doing the various poses, and even though I feel like my legs are relatively strong at this point, my quads were just burning in some of the poses. And my arms were just sore after the planks and downward dogs. At the end I felt good, and I'm glad I experienced it. It's an exercise class that I'll have to seriously try to keep moving through my routine.

Wednesday 2/8 - I got up HOW Early?!?

2012-02-08T19:53:00.000-05:00

Last night I made the decision to get up and go to a spin class today. The kicker is that the class was actually at 5:30am! So I set the alarm early, and got to bed .. well.. kinda early. It took a few false starts to get going, in which time I forgot my bike computer (so I could watch my heart rate) as well as my water bottle at least once, as well as my breakfast. I had only intended to have a few waffle biscuits (similar to the Honey Stinger waffles that Fat Cyclist loves so much, but smaller) to make it through the class before I had a real breakfast.

I made it to the class a little bit early, and I got myself fitted for the the spin cycle. The thing to realize about spin cycles is that you cannot just rest, the bugger keeps your legs moving even if you want to stop! That is, unless you are crazy enough to attempt to FORCE your legs to stop, at which point I think the spin cycle decides that you really don't need those kneecaps anymore. After a little bit of time on it, I got the hang of it. I dialed in my "home gear" and the instructor got us going.

Problem #2 is that my legs are strong, but only for about 2 minutes. So I followed the instructors directions and got my home gear, but it was way higher of a gear than I should have been in. Like 4 or 5 gears too high! So I got about 15 minutes or so into the course, and my legs are just completely spent. I had visions of overcooked spaghetti legs when I got off the bike. I adjusted my "home gear" down a bit over a few attempts, and finally got to a gear where I felt like I could follow the class without having to take breaks.

I did have to go get more water about 3/4 of the way through the class, but overall I was really happy I went. 6:30 came around, and I asked for a hose to clean the cycle up, as I felt like I had sweat about 18 gallons of water onto the unit. Instead I wiped it down, and we went through the cooldown stretches. When all was said and done I was very spent, extremely ready for breakfast, and very happy I managed to get up early. So happy in fact, that I decided I should go back to the gym after work and get a little more of a workout in.

I met my wife and kids there, and while the kids were in Zumbatonic we decided to head over the cardio theater. After about 10 minutes on the recumbent bike and I was definitely feeling the effects of the spin class in the morning. It was about then that I was glad I didn't attempt to go out on the roads for a bike ride this evening. The good thing is that I could just dial down the difficulty and watch "Mr Poppers Penguins" for a bit. We finished up about a 30 minute ride on the bikes, and it was time to go pick up the kiddos. From there it was home and dinner.

It's been a really long day, but I'm still very glad that I made the decision to get up this morning for the spin class. I hope I can continue to make Wednesdays my early day and keep going to the class.

Tuesday 2/7 - More Cycling in the Hills!

2012-02-07T20:18:00.000-05:00

Today was another great day in the Upstate, so that means I took the opportunity to get out on the bike. I realize that the Stars and Stripes challenge is in May, and I have a LOT of training to get done. John took me a different route up to Paris Mountain this time, and it has a LOT of elevation. I struggled a lot through it, don't believe the crazy Strava report. I seem to be doing better and better on each downhill, but the uphills are still killing me.

The one thing I realized while suffering up one of the climbs (about 8-10%, that's a breeze!) is that I'm feeling the same level of struggle on a lot harder hills now. Back in the fall, I would have been totally gassed on any of these inclines. Now they feel like I felt on the climb through Furman back then. It's going to be a long road to May, but if I just stay diligent with it I'm sure I'll do fine.

Now to just manage to get out of bed at 5am tomorrow for spin class...

The Stars and Stripes Challenge

2012-02-07T11:15:00.000-05:00

This is definitely a year for me to push myself outside of many of my comfort zones, not just physically with getting active, but spiritually and emotionally. I knew that moving to Greenville would mean a lot of changes, but I feel like I'm being led more to move beyond who I was into who a person that God can use as a vessel for His glory. In some ways it's not a comfortable experience, but I am striving to take each challenge with a "Dive In" mentality. I've taken that to my cycling, and to the Rob's Big Losers contest, as well as getting back to regularly attending church and even joining a Sunday School group that both Christy and I deeply enjoy.

As a part of that, I have signed up for the Palmetto Peloton Project's "Stars and Stripes Challenge". This is how they describe the challenge on their website (http://www.p3ride.org):

A ride like no other. Sandwiched between the USA Professional Cycling Time Trials and Road Race, the Stars and Stripes Challenge weekend puts you on the very roads where cyclists train year-round in Upstate South Carolina. Join us for a fun day benefiting cancer research, outreach, and advocacy.

To qualify participate in the Stars & Stripes Challenge, cyclists are required to donate and/or raise an entry fee, as well as meet a fundraising minimum.

This creates two different challenges for me. First is the ride itself. The course is a pro-course. I'm going to be focusing on training for it between now and May as a part of my routines. It's going to be challenging still during the race day, and it won't just be "me against the mountain", there will be a bunch of other riders on the course. The physical aspect will bring a new level of accountability to my workouts, and a goal that I'm not going to back down from. It's a challenge I can rise to meet, as my internal fortitude is strong enough for that. The second half of the challenge is going to push me well beyond my comfort zone, into a realm where Dragons of my own fear reside.

"[C]yclists are required to donate and/or raise an entry fee, as well as meet a fundraising minimum."

Fundraising is a challenge for me. I dread dealing with fundraising, as I always do some research and find out that some suit is pocketing up to 49.5% of the money that I think is going to a good cause. Many of you have heard me state that on some of my kid's fundraising exercises I feel like I should be buying them a fez and getting out an organ grinder with how they make them peddle goods to make us feel better. So thus me asking others to support me is a stumbling block, and a stresser automatically. I set myself a goal of $475 to raise by May, and with my typical fervor I intend to make or surpass it. I just need to get off the blocks somehow.

One thing I have found while reading through P3's site is that a vast majority of the funds they raise go to 3 specific organizations (you can read the full information on their site (link):

Amgen's Breakaway from Cancer: An cancer resource and advocacy group aimed at helping patients.
Greenville Hospital System, University Medical Center's Cancer Research: They are aimed at new cancer treatments as well as being a local system not a national organization.
The Lance Armstrong Foundation: "The Lance Armstrong Foundation serves to inspire and empower people affected by cancer".

What I would challenge you to do is do your own research, but I did find out while going through P3's site is that a vast majority of the funds raised went to Cancer Research in the Greenville area (not some national organization with a lot of overhead). In fact, of the $210,000 raised last year by P3, $140 ,000 of that went to GHS Cancer Research! The remaining $70,000 went to Amgen. You can read all of their history on their site (link)

If after spending time praying on it, and doing your own research, you felt led to support me in raising money for Cancer Research and Treatment, I would be humbled if you donate to my efforts. P3's site is set up to support the riders, you just have to select "Brian Lube" on the dropdown list on their donate site.

Palmetto Peloton Project's Donation Page

I deep appreciate all the support I've had so far, and look forward to having a follow-up to this post with pictures from the Stars and Stripes Challenge!

Monday 2/6 - Mystery Cardio Theater 3000 (plus Swimming!)

2012-02-06T20:41:00.000-05:00

Today was a crosstraining day for me, and I fully intended to spend it doing my routine in the weight area. That said, when I went down to the free weight section, it was rather full of people. I couldn't tell if folks were actively waiting to use the weights or not, but there were definitely more folks there than I wanted to deal with. So instead of doing weights, I opted for a trip up to the "Cardio Theater". This is probably one of the coolest things I've seen, as it's a room full of cardio equipment (elliptical machines, cycling machines, treadmills) in front of a large-ish screen that plays a movie all day. The movie changes each day. Today happened to be "Apollo 18", which was an interesting show for the 1/4 of it I saw during my workout. I sat down and ran through a relatively quick 15 minute workout on the recumbent elliptical, where I was doing intervals. So far, that seems like the best of the machines I've worked out on at the gym. Without feeling like I overdid it, my legs felt like they got a really good workout throughout the program. When I was finished with the elliptical, I figured it was time to try out the pool, as I've been meaning to give it a whirl.

As a little background, I grew up on the beaches in Florida. I don't mean "oh yeah, we went to the beach a few times a season. I mean, I lived about 500' from the dunes, and spent almost every day during Summer Vacation in the water. I honestly cannot remember a time when I couldn't swim, or that I didn't spend time in a pool in some manner. We've taken the kiddo's to the Springs in Florida on a regular basis for snorkeling, and I consider myself a relatively strong swimmer. Not Olympic standards, but I've always felt like I can do "well enough". So thus when I figured I'd do "some laps" in the pool, my intention was that I'd do at LEAST 10 laps. I had backed it off to thinking I'd do 5 and see how I did, but honestly I had figured I'd take a break and finish the set.

After getting changed, I went into the "bubble" (the gym has a shell over the salt-water pool to keep it out of the elements during the winter. That itself is noteworthy!) and found a lane to swim in. I'm not used to swimming in a lane per se, but I didn't have a big issue with it. I wasn't trying to do anything fancy, just swim a few laps. Well, I got to the turn on the first lap when I realized this wasn't just another swim. While they say that your heart rate doesn't get all that high in a pool (insert medical reasons here if you must), I was definitely getting winded right off the bat. I made it back from the completion of my first lap and thought "whoah".

I was still determined that I could complete at least *5* laps, I mean, common! I grew up around water. So I started on my second lap, and got to the turn and was getting pretty gassed. I took a few seconds to rest (it took me about 45s to get to the turn, btw), and went on my way back. I made it back, but by now I've realized there is no way I'm making it to 5 laps. Actually by this time I was thinking I may need a nap...

Even with that, I was determined to at _least_ finish 3 laps. I gave myself time to catch my breath, and went out for the 3rd lap. I made it to the turn but I was pretty winded, the water was definitely winning. I took a minute or so to attempt to get myself together, and started back. About halfway back I had wished I had taken 2 minutes instead of 1 to rest at the turn. At this moment I made a mental note that I was NOT going to be 'that guy' that had to have the lifeguards get out after just 2.5 laps in the pool. What I did I realize was that I should really just set the goal of finding out what I could do, and 3 laps was definitely all I could do (and then a little bit). After the effort to get back, I decided it was best to be done for the night, and to do some cooldowns and head out. I got out, and headed back to the locker room. At this point I realized that my arms definitely got a serious workout, as they felt like I had replaced the muscle with some jelly-like substance.

That said, I'm happy that I got in to the gym today and got the level of workout done that I did. I hope to look back at posts like this in April and see a huge difference in the intensity and time I can spend doing activities like this.

Sunday 2/5 - Extreme Sufferfest

2012-02-05T20:00:00.000-05:00

Sundays are the day of the week that I absolutely enjoy the most. After church, we come home and I get ready to ride with the folks over at Brookwood Church. This is the ride that I typically push myself outside of my comfort zone while I attempt to keep up. Today was no exception. We started an hour earlier than usual, but we had a great group of folks show up. I knew that I when I chose to go with the "fast group" that it was going to be a day with plenty of "Quiet Time" with just me and the bike on the back of the ride. Little did I know it was going to be an "Extreme Sufferfest" in the making! Before I go on, let me say I had a great time, and really showed improvements even with pushing myself so hard so early in the ride.

27.3 Mile ride according to Strava

The ride started out about as normal, heading out on Holland Road, which is the first challenging climb for me, and one I try to hit as hard as I can, as a way to test how I feel. I did pretty good most of the way up, but this hill is always deceiving because of just how long it goes after the main climb. By the time we made it to Harts road I was off the back a little bit, and as luck had it I missed the light. So while everyone else is pacing away at a nice clip, I'm looking at the light waiting for it to change. I took this as a challenge, and did my best to sprint the whole distance of Harts road to make up time. I got there before too long, but I was completely gassed. It took me until almost the Scuffletown Sprint Zone to really get myself back together.

Then there was the Sprint Zone. We started on the sprint zone, and I felt strong, so I caught up with the pack leading out, and just kept on the back tire. John and Paul passed us about 1/2 way down the sprint zone, so I switched to following Paul, and just pushed as hard as I could until the end. With a Heart Rate of over 185, you'd think I would be ready to leave my lunch on the side of the road at the end, but instead I really and honestly felt great. We then had to climb up Garret Patton Road, and keep on driving on. I got back to League Road, and stayed somewhat up with the pack the rest of the way back (although I did take the shorter route back to Harts near the end). Overall I'd say it was an Extremely productive ride, and I felt really great for doing it.

I had originally intended to check out the pool at the YMCA after I was done, but I think that the level of effort on the ride was enough for one day. We have some cloudier days later this week, so I'll just reschedule that workout for then.

Saturday 2/4 - 1 mile on the track + Bike Cleaning

2012-02-04T15:34:00.000-05:00

Today is Saturday, so it's track time. Today I didn't attempt to run, since my foot is feeling better but not 100% yet. Instead I set to goal to mostly walk at a decent pace. I got in about 15 laps again, taking about 22 minutes. I'd like to get the time down, but first I want to work up to walking the whole 5k. I need to set up a baseline time to actually walk further, as I'm not to a "wait wait, I need to stop. Does someone have a jelly donut I can borrow?" after 15 laps on the indoor track, but I want to feel strong on the ride.

After getting home, I finally took the challenge of cleaning my bike chain. I bought the bike back in Sept, and since then I have been remiss in taking care of cleaning off the old grease and gunk that the rear cassette and chain. After borrowing a chain cleaner from a good friend of mine, we (that is, Christy, 2 of the girls, and myself) took on the challenge of cleaning the chain. Amazing how much sticky, gooey grease can come off of such a small chain! After getting it cleaned off of the chain, I managed to find it on the rear wheel, the cardboard I put on the driveway, and least of which was my hands! I managed to get the cardboard, chain cleaner, and rear wheel cleaned up (I could have sworn that the shop towel was white when I brought it out to work on the project?!?) , but my hands are a different matter. I have a feeling that I'm going to be spending a few days attempting to get the last of the grease off my hands, or spending some money at Target tonight on some of the Lava-style soap that cleans grease off of hands (not to mention a layer or two of skin) better.

Earlier this morning I took a gander at trying on some of the clothes I keep around to mock myself from time to time as well. You know, the clothes that you get out of the drawer when you've been bad about doing laundry and go "oh. yeah. I can't wear these". Over the years I've gotten rid of most of these clothes, but I still have a few pairs of jeans that I've kept around. What I found is that for the first time in close to a decade, I can actually button/zip my 38" jeans while I'm still inside them! I have a long way to go before they'd be wearable OUT somewhere, mind you (unless you really like the "Muffin Top" look, which btw I do not), but just getting that far is amazing! 4 months ago I wouldn't have even been able to come close to getting them on. That bring on the new challenge of having to figure out what I still own that I can wear without it spontaneously falling off of my at inopportune times. Oh the hardships of weight loss!

Friday 2/3 - Crosstraining workout

2012-02-03T18:16:00.000-05:00

Woke up this morning feeling definitely under the weather. Sore throat, stuffed up nose, etc. "This morning" also was several times before my alarm went off. Got up and took some medicine, and vegged most of the morning trying to rest.

Christy had her Wellness Works appointment at 1, and I figured if I was going to get any workout done today I should go with her, and crash afterwards. I went through 2 reps of my strength training, about 15 minutes on the recumbent bike (I really like the Cardio Theater!), and then took a walk/jog with Christy around the track outside (since it was nice out). My foot was still a bit sore afterwards, but overall I felt well. Hopefully I can shake the rest of this cold pretty quickly so I can get more workout time in.

The weather doesn't looks favorable for a ride on Sunday, have to see what happens. Have my 1 mile run tomorrow, too.

Thursday 2/2 - Crosstraining

2012-02-03T07:38:00.001-05:00

The foot is feeling a lot better, especially since I got some new shoes! That said, tonight I have scheduled to work out with Nina, my wellness Coach. I went into the gym, and she had me go around the outside track and do some crosstraining routines. I have to say that skipping rope while running around a track isn't my personal favorite, but it definitely got my heart rate up.

I did enjoy the medicine ball routines, though. Especially the football routine where we ran with it down the track and rolled it back to each other.

Coming down with a cold, but hopefully I can push through it enough to get a workout done Friday.

Tuesday 1/31 - The Metatarsus Strikes Back

2012-02-01T08:57:00.001-05:00

For those very astute out there, you will notice that the post date for this is Wednesday, even though I'm writing about Tuesday. There is a reason for this, as Tuesday was not the most uplifting for me. Monday was an amazing day for me, and I was very excited and honestly had issues sleeping Monday night. Tuesday I was awake and ready to get the day started at 5am. I knew I hadn't gotten quite enough sleep, so I attempting to rest until closer to my normal wake up (around 6am). For those that have had just an amazing day that keeps them awake at night, it just didn't work.

What I noticed what I got out of bed was that my left foot ached when I put pressure on it. For those that have followed along, remember how I wore my five fingers for the 1 mile training last Saturday? And how on both Sunday and Monday I did some challenging cycling rides? Yeah, my foot let me know that it wasn't happy with that. After I got moving it wasn't doing horridly, I just figured I'd have to be careful with what I did, and not "overdo" it. It felt okay throughout the day at work, although it wasn't real happy with walking around for any distance downtown. Tuesday is supposed to be a running day for me right now, but I figured I'd go to the gym and just walk for the time in order to get some of a workout done.

By the time I got to the Y, my foot was really not happy. In fact, I would say it was rather ticked off that I wasn't listening to it. I changed and went out to work out with my wife, who found a stationary bike pretty quickly and was peddling along. The treadmills near her were all in use, so I sat down at the stationary bike next to her and cycled for about 10 minutes. During that time my foot felt fine! Finally a treadmill a couple of machines down opened up, so I figured I would finish up on the treadmill to at least do what was on my weekly setup. Not a bright idea. I did a brisk 15 minute walk, getting in almost a mile on the treadmill (although I swear that I would have walked at least half again as far on the track as I did on the treadmill!) and at the end I could barely put pressure on my left foot at all! At this point I think my foot was trying to tell me "get off! get off!", and it was at a volume where I really couldn't ignore it.

So I went home and elevated the foot for the rest of the evening. I didn't enjoy having to eat dinner in the living room, but I managed (although I need to get my food journal up to date now, and I probably had more than I should have).

The silver lining here is that I think I broke through a plateau that I haven't been able to get through in years this week. I've been stuck at the 250+ mark for so long, I'm pleased to see results both on the scale and in my clothes! I'm just keeping myself focused on all the good, and elevating my foot while at work today.

1/30 - Over the Mountain!

2012-01-30T20:35:00.001-05:00

Today was a major step for me, and honestly I still cannot believe that I did it. For the first time, I made it to the top of Paris Mountain on my bike. I maybe be in 118th place on the Strava Leaderboards, but I'm still ahead of the millions of folks that haven't gotten off the couch yet.

http://app.strava.com/rides/3751797#

Totally unbelievable. I find it hard to believe that in August of last year I was looking at a new start, in Florida, out of shape and heart low. Honestly, I am living an absolute dream, and thanking God every day for the opportunities that we have up here. And I know the best is yet to come.

"I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."
Phillipeans 4:13

Even climb a mountain on a bike. Praise God!

1/29 Bike Ride - 28.5 miles

2012-01-29T17:58:00.000-05:00

Today I had a chance to spend some time on the bike. This is the activity that I've come to really enjoy, as it seems to really clear my head and challenges me over and over.

The ride today was no slouch, though. 28.5 miles through the beautiful countryside outside of Simpsonville, SC. There was a pretty stiff wind at times, too. I spent a lot of the time off the back of the group, but I was determined to do my best to keep up. I was really proud of one segment where I climbed a hill with the whole group cheering me on to the top. Really made my afternoon, and strengthened me through to the end.

http://app.strava.com/rides/3720250

Have to say, I'm ready to not push my own wind for 2 hours at a time.

Tomorrow is supposed to be another clear day. May be round 2 vs Paris Mountain.

Saturday 1/28: Goal of a 1 mile run

2012-01-28T17:33:00.001-05:00

Went to the Y today for my scheduled workout: happened to be a 1 mile run. Took Christy and the girls with me so we could get a workout together. Loaded up my phone with the "50 #1 Christian Workout music" album, put on my Vibram FiveFingers for a change of pace, and was on my way.

My intention was to set a baseline with this run, to figure out what exactly I was capable of. Since 12 laps equaled 1 mile, I worked intervals into the workout. I had 1 lap of warm up at a slowish pace, and then worked in running 1 lap at a moderately hard pace then walking 2 laps of recovery. I ended up completing the fast laps in between :31 and :36 with the walking laps coming in 1:28 and 1:40. Taking the first lap off as a warm up lap, my total 1 mile came in at 16:07. Have to see how that improves.

A thing of note is that I had on my Vibram FiveFingers KSO shoes, instead of my Nike's for this run. These are some really nice "close to barefoot" shoes that I really enjoy wearing when I can. The problem is that it's been close to 6 months since I really used them, and I've done a lot of cycling to build up my legs in that time. Thus at the end of the run my calves were a bit sore. I'll probably use these throughout the workouts to determine which shoes I'll wear for the 5k. Part of me thinks I'll train up to use the KSO's for the 5k just for the looks they'll probably get on the run.

http://app.strava.com/runs/3682608

The one thing I'm noticing is that the Garmin Edge 305 isn't going to help me indoors, as I lose GPS reception throughout the run. I'm contemplating getting a foot pod for Christy's Garmin Forerunner 405cx to see if that can help out. May have to end up getting her a FR60 so I can use that more for the gym.

Tomorrow's activity will be cycling.

New Year, New Blog post

2012-01-27T08:34:00.001-05:00

It's a new year, 2012 even. It seems that I've not taking all of the advantages I should have on the blogging I could have been doing here, especially over the past few months. That said, 2011 was a real roller coaster ride for me with the new job, new house, the move, and the costs involved with all the changes.

I found out last week that I'm a part of "Rob's Big Losers". This is a program sponosered by the Local YMCA branches in the Greenville area, as well as HIS Radio up here. I have to blog for them, so I'm figuring I should blog here at least as often as I blog for the program. This week has been extremely stressful for me as I learn about the program and what's expected of me. Add on top of that I have to tear down survival walls that I put in place for years about my self image and my own expectations of what I can do and what I'm capable of. I know I'm capable of SO much more that I do now fitness-wise, and I cannot wait to see how the program helps me out. I just need to let go and enjoy the trip.

Rob Dempsey quoted this on Monday, and I've been using it as my signature on my personal email since I heard it. It's a comfort and a reassurance:

"I can do all things through Christ who strengtheneth me."
Phillipeans 4:13

My goal is to blog here after every workout, whether it's a part of the Y program or one of my routine bike rides. To go over how I feel and post up my expectations and successes. That way in 12 weeks I can look back and see how far I've come.

Changes in Latitude...

2011-11-23T10:35:00.000-05:00

It's time for my semi-annual post to the blog about things and such. I took a new job in September, and proceeded to spend the next 2 months away from the family trying to get things settled.

While things are not settled, we are now all together at the new house. In fact, I'd say we are as far from "all settled" as possible. We have boxes everywhere and an ever increasing amount of missing furniture we need to overcome. That said, we're all excited about what the future is holding and what we can do. This is the first year that I can remember where I actually had to work on my birthday, but it was still fantastic.

Day 7 (of 90)

2011-04-11T09:17:00.000-04:00

So today completes the first week since I started the new workout routing, following the BeachBody "Power90" system. So far I've completed 3 of the "sculpt" workouts, and 2 of the "sweat" workouts. I'm only working out 5 days a week, instead of the 6 that the program calls for, in order to allow for a more normal-ish weekend and work in other activities with the family.

The good news is that I've managed to wake up at 6:15am, or there abouts, each day and get myself out of bed. I've completed the workouts, although in some cases I still pass on certain routines or cannot complete them fully. I would hope that by day 45 I would be able to complete most of the routines and be upping weights. I'm working with lower weights right now, because big huge muscles isn't what I'm looking for.

Here's to another strong week, and a good report of some weight loss and size changes soon!

Power 90 - Day 1

2011-04-05T08:52:00.000-04:00

It's been a while since I used this blog as a resource for putting down my thoughts, and I'm figuring that blogging out my exercise routine may be helpful for keeping me on track. I'm not going to post up every day, but on days where I feel like I need to post up about it I will.

That said, the last time I attempted P90 (no bloody M, X or +) was in the summer of 2004. The workout routine worked great, but the stress it put me under along with work and home life was overwhelming at the time. I wanted to be in shape for my 30th birthday, and while I did loose a LOT of weight on the program, I had to choose between my marriage and my self image at the time. It's 7 years later, and I think I'm willing to try this again. I'm using a few new strategies with it (only M-F, doing it at 6:30am instead of after work), so hopefully things will end up WAY differently.

Today I finally got my first workout put in, and it was a workout. I really wanted to start with the strength training on Day 1, but I also want to keep Strength on M-W-F, and do cardio on T-Th (leaving Sat and Sun for other activities with the family). I also was unwilling to postpone it even 1 more day just to start on the routine that I wanted, I figured it was time to "dive in". I got through most of the routines okay, and I survived the ordeal, so I'm going to count that in the "win" column. I need to take the time tomorrow morning to get my weight written down, and I have my measurements from last weekend already down in ink, so I can start tracking my progress.

Here's to hoping for a "more fit" me in 2011!

Working with Birch

2010-09-03T16:53:00.000-04:00

On monday I managed to go pick up the 2 sheets of Birch plywood for the main bulk of the project (1x 1/2" and 1x 3/4"). It took most of the week, but I have managed to get the bottom and longer support struts rough cut out. Working with the Birch in some ways is a lot easier, and in some ways is a whole lot more difficult. Most of the more difficult has to do with working with the tools I have at the house, as I don't have a complete wood workshop to work with. I am finding that I'm getting more confidence in what I'm doing after I try a few times, so hopefully by the final cuts I'll be getting closer to being a pro with it :)

Once I have all the parts rough cut out and staged, I'll start working on sanding and leveling such that I can start assembly. If I can have the frame rough cut and be working on the clean up part by October, I think I'll be doing extremely well.

Ready for the Real Thing

2010-08-29T13:59:00.001-04:00

This is mostly going to be more of a a photo update than a lot of narrative today. I did want to document the "rig" a little better on how I'm using it. The Router is attached to the guide that I finished yesterday, and the two black lines are to mark the two I'm using for inside and outside cuts. The inside cut is just a little bit larger than the Senna plans call for, to make sure I don't over-do it. I figured I can always trim it back down the 1/8" difference that it made.

I cut out the middle 1/2" ring setup, and gave it a go. Overall it looks to work near perfectly. I would state the when you get to the last piece that completes it, be careful as you basically have created a gear that can spin rather easily! After that I notched out the connectors, labeled them, and then created a few of the curved ribs with the insides. Using this method I was able to get 3 of the ribs done easily, with 1 more that I can hand carve. I will not get all of the ones that the plans had in the center piece, but I have a 1/4" 2x2 ply I'm planning on using for that one as-is, so I should be good.

The major question I'm going to have is, do I keep these parts and finish them off, or do I re-do all of this work in the Birch ply once I purchase it this week?

The first cut is the deepest

2010-08-28T17:37:00.002-04:00

Not my best work.

This is going to be a little longer of a post today, mostly because I got a whole lot more done on the project than I have in recent days. Last night I attempted to use some 2'x2' sheets of plywood to get some practice cuts made, while attempting to create my router guide for cutting circles. To say the least, it didn't go so well. What I learned is that holding the trim router in my hand is not going to do much for me all the time, I'm going to have to be VERY careful with it! It didn't help that the battery that I thought was full for my Ryboi ONE system was anything but full, so I put it to charge and took the evening off. I figured Saturday may bring different results.

What I can say is that a day, the right tools, and the right techniques, make all the difference! I spent the morning out, and after lunch came back and started back up again on creating the router circle cutting guide, this time with a fully charged 18v battery. After getting the shape cut out, I cleared out the middle in as close to a shape as I could to the bottom guide of the router. After that I drilled out the 4 screw holes to connect it to the bottom of the router, and then drilled out the holes, I thought, to the lengths needed for the various curved pieces.

The next part was to test it out. For my first attempt I decided to use a 1/4" piece of 2x2 ply, and pre cut out the circle so I was only trimming what I thought was going to be maybe 1/2" off of it. What I found was that I could place the router in the middle of my workbench and vice it in place, upside down. Then after drilling a hole in the center of the board, place a nail through both the ply and the guide hole below. During my first attempt I didn't secure the router depth well enough, and it slipped some. I was able to re-secure it, and trim it off no problem.

The good news is that it created a beautiful circle, but it was less than 18" in diameter by about 1/2"! I made a few adjustments to the guide from what I learned - First I created a new hole at approximately 1/2" further down the guide than what I had before, and this time I place a spare piece of 1/2" ply underneath the guide further up to help secure it so it wouldn't bend. When I got my test wood, I had picked up a 2x2 1/2" ply as well, intending to have enough material to test out most techniques well before attempting to work on the good hardwood!

This time, I measured out a center hole about 9 1/4" from the edges of the wood, and drilled the new pilot hole. I'm still getting the hang of using the router, but it's definitely going better. I did have a few problems still with cutting out the circle, but it's definitely improving. I may need to get a better 1/4" router bit than the cheapie $7 one from Harbor Freight to do this work, but it is definitely doing the job on the test runs so far. Hopefully by Labor day I should have the initial pieces of the frame cut out and ready to assemble.

Many Bothans Died...

2010-08-25T20:32:00.000-04:00

One of the final major decisions I had to make in the construction of my Astromech was pretty much made for me yesterday: what material to use. Not being able to put a door on the back of my droid if made from styrene, along with the fact that with plywood I can realistically make a 2-3-2 setup (an astromech that can stand on 2 or 3 legs interchangeably), was tipping me back to a plywood design. Hearing back from a local plastic supplier that the shipping for the 2 initial sheets of styrene that I would need is more than just using plywood push it over the top.

I found that the Home Depot down the street has the grade and thickness of plywood I'd need "in stock", and that the price was reasonable for the amount of wood I'd need for the frame plus "some". So today I brought the "Senna" blueprint plans over to Kinko's (I refuse to call it FedEx Office or whatever) and got it printed out. Todd from the R2 Builder's club had offered to print them out for several of us, but I just felt uncomfortable with asking on the initial plans I'd need.

My goals for getting some time this weekend to work on the cuts seems reasonable at this point. My thoughts are to get some less expensive (see thinner and cheaper) plywood to do some initial tests on with the tools before spending the money for the real materials. Just getting started is exciting, though.

Workspace Completed

2010-08-23T16:38:00.003-04:00

After making the decision that I really wanted to build a droid, there were three big starting points I had to deal with: Where I was going to do this work, what droid I'm building, and what materials I'm going to use. Today I got the first of these 3 mostly done, and should finish up one of the other two this week. My hope is to make the first cuts on the frame this weekend, if it's feasible.

That said, my workspace is mostly cleared off. I had a chance to go to Harbor Freight today and get the 1/4" router and other materials I knew I'd need. I put together the drill press I've had sitting around to make sure it worked (it does!) and then proceeded to put the parts away. I only spent about $76 on the additional tools I'd need, so I'm pretty happy with that.

The next big decisions is material. There are 3 main designs for the frame: Aluminum, Plywood, or High Impact Polystyrene. This is one of the biggest decisions I'm going to have to make, as the design I use will forever dominate this droid. Honestly, aluminum is out of the question, as the costs of the material are just too high for me in the making of my initial droid. That leaves Plywood, which is a more available product, but heavier, or Polystyrene which is lighter. I've been planning on a styrene build for a while now, but I think I'm starting to change my mind as I think about the lifecycle of the little guy. He'd be light with the styrene, but he wouldn't be very durable that way.

The last major decision is what astromech I'm building. I had decided that I didn't want to attempt R2-D2, as it would require more precision than I was going to be comfortable with, but I think I've figured out which one I'm going to do. The good thing is that painting is going to be so late in the project for me (frame and legs should take me until the end of the year, so it'll be when I start putting the outer layers on him that I'll be really painting). For right now, I'm focusing on making him as R4-P17, which is Obi-wan's droid in both Episode II and III. It should work out nicely, as it's still in continuity, but it's not the "most recognized" droid that way.

Droid Building

2010-08-16T11:05:00.003-04:00

After going to Celebration V last week, I think I'm going to be inspired to do some more "hands on" work. I got to talk to some of the folks from the R2-D2 Builder's Club, and I wish I had spent more time in their area learning and seeing more. Since I only had a 1-day pass to the convention, I couldn't spend enough time in any one location to really do much.

This is going to be a very adventurous build for me, and definitely something that is going to tax me. Generally I like to "get things done", but this is a kind of project where you have to "enjoy the ride" much more than the final goal. From what I'm reading and seeing, I can do a lot of the build myself, saving a good chunk of money on the initial frame and legs. I have most of the parts I'd need for that. At best I can see this taking 6-12 months to get to a point where I'd start to do actual automation on it, which is a very long term type of project for me. Keeping the dedication and the drive for it would be challenging, but I think it would be a fun and very personally profitable project.

My goal is to slowly start up a section of my blog, if not a whole new blog, for the Droid build as I go. We'll see what develops.

Am I Spock?

2010-05-14T11:49:00.002-04:00

I had a chance this morning to watch the 2009 self-titled Star Trek movie, which was in my opinion one of the most unique reboots in recent movies. With that, I got to pondering on the very basic facets of Kirk and Spock, the primal essence that defines the character.

The title of this post actually has history for me, much more than the ramblings that I'm typing out right now. Back in 1995 I had a unique chance to go to the first ever Sci-Fi convention inside of the Magic Kingdom at Walt Disney world. While this was not the first convention of this ilk that I had gone to, hosting it in the newly revamped "TomorrowLand" made it unique. I was able to listen to many famous actors and writers talk about their experiences, and the most unique of these was Leonard Nimoy.

He was there promoting his new book at the time: I am Spock. He talked about the parts of the character that were also parts of himself. After watching his performance alongside the new Spock and Kirk in the film, it begets a very interesting thought process for me: How much do my peers establish their personality based on the heroes written on screen during their youth? Kirk, Spock, Luke, Han, Indiana (even if it was the dog's name): These are the heroes of my youth, and the archetypes of the strong leader that I dreamed about at night.

Am I Spock? No, I would never characterize myself that way. In fact, I would state much more clearly that I would identify with Kirk as an archetype - Leap then Look, run with emotion, and settle the details later. It is not all of who I am, but reconciling my personality and how I view myself has to be a large part of determining who I am going to be.

Maybe one of these days I'm going to figure out what I'm going to be when I grow up.

Complication Frustration

2008-07-07T12:14:00.003-04:00

It seems like, at least for me, the older I get the less I want to deal with frustations that come from complexity. Things that take me from my drone-like motion through the day seem to really agitate me anymore.

Like today - Brighthouse was supposed to be coming out to install Digital Phone for the house, since my current voip provider is closing it's doors sometime this month. Thing is, I really don't have a cable jack in the house, and was willing to spend their $20 on having someone else do it. The guy comes out to do the install today, and tells my wife that it's "Impossible" to do, I'd have to get an electrician or something.

That tells me it's not "impossible", but it's going to require more work than he's willing to do, or can charge back to Brighthouse for. So now I have a new hassle of running the cable myself and dealing with all the quirkiness of doing the cable run.

Personally, I think it's a matter of "boulders, rocks, pebbles and sand in the jar" type of deal. I already know I've got more than I can do, and how I fill my available time with things to do is a big part of that. Frustration comes in when I can't spend the time they way I want to, which is constantly. Seems that whenever one thing that I really need to get taken care of is done, I have 15 other things that crop up.

On that thought, I really should get an email out about the flooring upstairs, see what I'm going to do with that frustration.

Cisco LIVE!

2008-06-30T10:00:00.003-04:00

Last week I got exposed to the big, gigantic bowl of Kool Aide known as "Cisco Live!". This is the rebranding of their "Networkers" convention that they've done now 19 times. After feeling like I've been drinking from a firehose, I will say I came away with more of an idea of the vision from Cisco than I think I've ever had from the company. Maybe it's just bad local representation (as in Sales force) or just great representation by their competition down here, but I've had a very jaded view of Cisco for a very long time. Three distinct things caught my attention during the week though -

Cross Market Leadership: They aren't just the "best of breed" in one thing - they are competitive in so many different areas that they really interconnect and intersect their IP. That's not saying that the product in the end is the best, and I'm still turned off on the "one stop shop" since the old days of Lucent/Nortel beating folks up. That said, it's still impressive that they have leading market share (top 2/3) in over 20 products.
Trying new ideas on themselves first: John Chamber's keynote talked at length about how Cisco has evolved over the last 8 years to bring about a new corporate structure that is based on collaboration instead of hierachy. Granted some of the hierachy still exists, but from the presentation given a lot of the middle management is distributed. Think "Bit Torrent vs FTP" in design structure, and while the metaphor might break down shortly after that, the mental image seems to be similar.
IPv6 - they seem to have put a lot of effort into implementing IPv6 today. They show where and why folks will be moving to it, and the concept of the issues that Cable MSO's are having is probably the first place where wide-spread IPv6 will be needed. All the work that's been done on tunneling v6 through v4 is going to be important very soon, too.

That said, I came away with a lot of brain food for the next few months. I need to start trying to blog more, and actually do blogs during events instead of afterwards, to try to get more of my thoughts down to review later.. but that will come with modivation and time.

Why Metallica STILL sucks

2008-06-11T10:08:00.003-04:00

In July of 2003, the Orlando Weekly posted an article about Why Metallica Still Sucks. It was a really well done piece of journalism, with a jade against Metallica. A band that was literally on top of the world in 1992, now personally I consider them a joke. They probably have some of the most recognizable metal in the business, and inspired a generation of bands. Thing is - their trademark vocal sounds have been lost to aging, and their trademark is now to be anti-fan.

They used to be the band that encouraged folks to tape their live performances and share it with their fans, now they ask journalists to not report on how bad their new album is. I found the following the most disturbing, though:

Metallica's management and PR team knew who the (anonymous) writer of the piece was, as they invited him; if they chose to do so, they could probably make his livelihood more difficult to earn in the future.

That is beyond disturbing - the fact that a company was pressured by "you'll never work in the business again" in the age of the Internet is still a sad, sick reality is just preposterous. There was no NDA signed, and the product was obviously not ready to be commented on per se. This turned from a possible win PR-wise by Metallica into what should be a complete nightmare.

After the flop of that "St. Anger" was, I don't know how much more "music" (if you can call what St. Anger was really music) we'll see from them. They shouldn't have to produce more music, they keep whoring out the old hits to their fans over and over again. At least they have that pension plan to blow on booze and whores.

Technology Demos

2008-05-27T10:16:00.002-04:00

Personally, I love the concept of a technology demo. It shows what could be done with a product or an idea. It's a proof of concept. What I find amazing is the fact that Nintendo has turned these into a profit margin. It seems that they have decided to push the envelope not with high quality, well designed games that have folks really re-thinking how they play, but with gimicks and technology demos of what could be done.

Last week my wife bought Wii Fit. My overall impression is actually positive for the product, but right now I want to focus in on and be really critical of what it is - it's a technology demo. The "trainers" are horridly underdone - and I don't just mean the graphics, which are bad in almost every way. They aren't animated for the most part, heck their lips don't even move, and the backgrounds look like they are from a PSOne, not a current generation console. The balance board is sometimes slow to respond, and the software could do more to determine how well you are doing with the pose, but it doesn't seem to. It also is horrid for motivation. The first thing it does is it weighs you, and figures out your BMI. It claims that around 22 is "optimal", and tells you that while doing the tests, but it's also records that as borderline obese (you figure that one out). During the tests it asks if you easily trip while walking, or if you have problems standing up. Overall I'd say that the overall tone is "demeaning". I'd guess that at least 2 out of 10 households that play this are going to bring it back to gamestop as used within 6 weeks because they aren't having any positive effects from it, and the self image of their child (or themselves) is horridly impacted.

Down to the workouts. The yoga is good, and you do feel some good initial burn from it. The pushup-plank pose really gives me a chest workout so far. My big gripe here is that you can't configure a 10 or 15 minute workout and just go through the poses. To do 10 minutes of working out takes a good 5 minutes of downtime between poses to go through their stupid slow talking and menus. There is very little to help folks trying to learn on what they should do, like don't work out the same muscle group every day, but try to break it up (legs one day, chest/arms the next). The mini-games are good, but they are mini-games, and everything requires unlocking. Whoever came up with the idea of unlocking basic fitness routines should pretty much be shot.

Maybe someone will take the balance board idea and come up with a really solid workout routine around it, one that's can become almost a personal trainer for folks. The concept is there, the technology demo I'm sure will sell well. Now maybe a real top-notch studio will do the actual work. Maybe they can get a sponsor of a real fitness guru to go through the workouts, and then you can get a varied and healthy workout. Hasn't happened yet on the Wii, though. Then again, maybe it'll need to be mimicked by the other two systems to be taken seriously...

Adversity

2008-05-08T10:36:00.002-04:00

I'm not 100% sure if I should feel as relieved and happy as I do right now, over something as trivial as what I did this week. The "adversity" was something normally I'd just roll my eyes about, honestly. I decided instead of spending over $1,000 on a new PC system this year as a reward from a good bonus check and the new stimulus program, that I'd try to just get what I really need to push my existing system for another year or so. So I bought a new case, some additional fans and CPU heat sink, and a new hard drive. What I figured is that if I could overclock my existing A64 3000+ a fair amount, as well as re-install the OS and put it in a case I didn't loathe, that it could easily do what I wanted it for another year - namely do some media serving to my 360, and play World of Warcraft.

So I picked up a new CoolerMaster case, which I adore so far btw, a nice CPU heatsink, and a 500gig 7200RPM SATA drive. My existing copy of XP has been on this rig since 2005, and is installed on a 120g UDMA133 IDE drive. So I figured by putting a fresh copy of XP on a new drive, I'd be golden. I had a copy of XP MCE 2005 I picked up a while back, so I figured I could play around with Media Center to the 360 while I was at re-installing so after putting the new hardware together I started there. Got everything installed, and as far as I could tell, everything was running fine. Try to load up WoW, and the frame rates would drop off. Spent literally days fiddling with it, but always came back to if I launched up the copy of XP on the IDE drive, it ran fine. Tried new drivers, old drivers, drivers that I had on my IDE drive still... always came back to bad frame rates.

So last night, after reading more tips of things to play around with on the official WoW boards, I decide one last time to wipe the drivers and try using the latest and greatest from nVidia. I noticed that I may have downloaded the nForce motherboard drivers from the wrong place, as my old nForce3 is listed in their "legacy" driver section, so I get those instead. I re-download a fresh copy of the newest Forceware drivers as well. After a few bumps in the road, needless to say the Ethernet chip on the motherboard overall is a very unhappy camper in this setup anymore, I get the system back up and launching into WoW. And the frame rates are solid. They aren't perfect mind you, I get 20-40fps on average in most zones including the most notoriously lagging ones, and the UI doesn't slow down so I'm not typing and waiting to see what I type.

And so, I'm happy. Simple pleasures I guess, but it's nice to take a mountain that you know you can climb and make it to the top.

Over-Stimulated

2008-05-02T08:51:00.003-04:00

So, after having my 360 for almost a year now, I have amassed a pretty decent collection of games. The one thing that I've noticed, is that a large majority of them are rated "M" (for Mature). When you look at the commercials on TV for games, most of them state "Rated 'M' for Mature" in the commercial, while they are showing cool graphics and/or cutscenes. The question to me doesn't become are we creating a society where women are beaten and children are killing chilren - we've had that for decades now. The question is what are we glorifying to our kids throughout ALL of society.

Now, I'm not saying I will buy GTA IV or whatever, but I really have reservations with Glenn Beck's comments that it is creating a better killer. I think the research was solid, the facts pretty straight, but the premise was failing. Because GTA makes you press a button on a controller and watch in third person the reaction, instead of making you fire a realistic weapon in first person, I'm not sure I can buy into his strangely anti-military, right wing fear of Big Brother concept that video gaming is making our kids to be killers. Better tacticians, maybe.

Whether we want to believe it or not, video gaming really is more of a litmus test of our society than an actual change mechanic. How many of the top selling games that come out each month are inappropriate for someone 8-14? How many movies are PG-13 or higher? How many of the "glamorous" TV shows are TV-MA? How many books on the shelf are to the literary level of a street worker, and become NYTimes best sellers or whatever?

We as a society want to wage wars on so many things, but we spend way too little time wanting to spend time looking at our own self indulgence. Video games aren't the evil of the world, neither is TV or movies. A "Big Mac" isn't going to kill you. Having 37 of 'em in a month might, though.

Maybe if we'd spend more time diversifying ourselves, instead of indulging on the mental mush candy fed to us as a whole, we'd be a much different society. But then again, who ever said that the Enemy ever wanted us to be spiritually and mentally fed? It's like Hanzel and Gretel at a spiritual and cosmic level...

Job Abandonment

2008-04-30T13:52:00.002-04:00

Going to be brief on this, mostly because it has me worked up enough to babble but not enough to really rant fully on. I really don't get why folks would want to abandon their job, and at least not do the right thing and at the very least email someone (HR, their boss, a friend in the company) that they are leaving.

By leaving with no notice, and leaving clues that folks have to figure out the person that is hurt the most in the end is really yourself. Friends you had can be put off that you just left, past employers wouldn't re-hire you or give out a good reference to a new job. When a new employer checks with HR at the old job, they'll find out you were terminated for job abandonment, and may pass over hiring you.

It definitely feels like to me that it must be a personality thing or something. Guess it's one of those neurosis I can be glad I don't have.

The problem with DRM

2008-04-25T08:57:00.002-04:00

Okay, there is no one "problem with DRM", besides that it is DRM. The problem with DRM is that the way it exists is really worthless.

Let's take an example of a system that I think is awesome, but flawed - Amazon Unbox. The biggest issue with DRM is that it cannot handle exceptions that happen in real life. I personally have an unbox account, and I had it linked to a system where the HD is now longer viable, I cannot load the operating system such to "uninstall" my copy of unbox and release the license. Thus I have content that I cannot use on one of my allowed machines, because that machine is no longer viable.

The second is the thought of $1.99 for broadcast shows. Why in the world has no-one thought about adding in-show adds to these, and requiring you to re-download new adds every number of views to continue watching the shows? I mean, it's a great concept to be able to get the ultimate "on demand" for shows you like, but I'm not going to honestly pay $1.99 to watch something I can DVR technically for "free". If I really wanted to watch that old episode of Babylon 5, for example, I'd rather just buy the DVD and not have to deal with download DRM in the mix.

At some point the content providers need to find a better way to provide their content to bring about new revenue models, instead of trying to shove unproven and ineffective ways to bring folks to content down the consumers throat, while having the old models be painless and relatively simple to keep using.

Game Saves

2008-04-15T14:03:00.003-04:00

Back when I first got my NES, Zelda had a battery in it, so you could save your game as you went through the adventure classic (somehow I never really have felt that the Legend of Zelda was a RPG). Since those early games, the concept of game saves has been important. Up until the release of theSegaCD, game data was saved on the cartridge itself. If you rented a game from the video store, you lost all your saves when you returned it. Also with age you run into the issue that you loose your save games when the battery eventually dies. With the SegaCD, internal storage appeared: This is great for the rental concept, but horrid for the worst case scenario that your system dies and you have to replace/repair it. Luckily my original SegaCD and Saturn both are still in great working condition!

The PS1, N64, DreamCast PS2, and GameCube all had the concept of memory cartridges. These are neat because you can manage your saves individually. The Dreamcast actually made your VMU into it's own gaming peripheral, allowing for mini-games on the device. While cool, these were typically expensive propositions that were an additional charge you had to get when buying the system. Yeah, the Dreamcast was a low $99 at one point, but you had to get a $20 VMU and a $50 game just to do anything with the system!

In today's generation storage is by default again on an internal platform. For the Wii this is much like it was for the Saturn of old - an internal flash drive. Enough storage for a few things, but not for extra content. The PS3 and the 360 both use the internal storage for gaming and multimedia as well as game saves, and add an extra bit of goodness called DRM (or Digital Rights Management). This means that your save game cannot be used by someone else that logs into your system, and vice versa. Now not only if your system's hard drive dies do you perhaps loose your saves (and purchased games!), but you cannot use your game saves as you wish with your friends per se. With the 360 there is a bit of reason for this, as there is an "achievement score" that could be "fluffed" by sharing game saves that had certain achievements either easily in grasp or completed for you. That said, is my gamerscore my "fun-o-meter"?

I'm wondering if there is a holy grail of game saves, and if there is if we'll ever see it? Ideally what I'd love to see is that DRM goes away on game consoles, and the USB ports on these systems are allowed to be used for copying of game saves. Although I'd assume that it's mostly a pipe dream.

Arcade Perfect

2008-04-14T08:17:00.004-04:00

The Sega Saturn was released on "Saturnday" - May 11, 1995 - in the United States. The system was arguably the most powerful of the 32-bit generation. The sad thing is that this machine literally produced "Arcade Perfect" representations of some of the hottest games on the market, but in many respects was a complete failure. Personally I think Sega bought into the hype that everything had to be 3D, and allowed the system to get bogged down into a type of gaming that just couldn't be matched on the hardware. It was Sega's "Strike 2", after the failed genesis add-on "32x" was canceled quickly after release amid a torrent of bad hardware and limited software releases. Even with the release of what I consider, as well as many others, the best software for the system, Sega canceled the Saturn in 1998. Games such as Panzer Dragoon Saga, which I actually happen to have played at one point and I'm almost sorry I sold, showed the versatility of the system.

To me, the Saturn is one of those systems that wasn't given a fair enough chance to survive in the US. Panzer Dragoon Saga was technically released after the system was canceled in the US, and as such saw a very limited run. The various Capcom games that were released as "Arcade Perfect" in Japan never saw the light of day in the US at all. It's really a shame that it's considered a bad console, as it had a lot to offer. By all accounts it was a difficult system to program for, but the quality games that were made definitely were silky smooth on the system.

I finally found all my old games for the Saturn over the weekend, and got a chance to reconnect with "Bust a Move 2", "Marvel Superheros", "1942" and I attempted to get "Marvel vs StreetFighter" working, but it looks like my 4-in-1 cart needs to be replaced.

It's just an amazing system, with games that many never will know how good they ran in a home console, or how impressive it was to get that kind of system in the home.

Dreamcast...

2008-04-11T07:48:00.004-04:00

The Sega Dreamcast was released on September 9, 1999. Sadly, this is a system I didn't get "Fully Involved" in until Phantasy Star Online was released in 2000. Shortly thereafter the system was canceled, and much like my Saturn collection, I picked things up on the secondary market.

Games like Sonic Adventure, NFL 2k, and PSO made this a great console that died well before it's time. To me the Dreamcast is much like the Wii, only it didn't have a gimick to help keep it afloat. The Dreamcast was very underpowered in comparision to the PS2 or GameCube. And with their partner for the project getting fully into the console scene with the XBOX, 4 consoles on the market was just too much for Sega to bear.

Also, issues arose with the copy protection on the box, and it was found out that every model produced could run non-signed games with relative ease. This was a big problem because of piracy, but it was also a major boon to the emulation and homebrew scene. Site such as DCEMU got their start as being a resource to learn about how to create and publish non-signed Dreamcast games.

Last night I finally decided to pull out ye' ole Dreamcast and fire it up. At first I tried out my copy of Daytona USA Championship Circuit. I will tell you that the feel for this game is non-existant: Basically even with the rumble pack in the unit, you cannot "feel" the games mechanics while driving. I only had a chance to play one other game before packing the unit up for the night, so I chose Marvel vs Capcom 2. Boy I've forgotten how much I miss those 2D fighters from Capcom. I happen to have a Saturn to Dreamcast controller adpater, so I used my Saturn arcade stick. The game was silky smooth and fun to play, but I'm going to have to find my import copy of Marvel vs Capcom for the Saturn and try it out soon enough to compare it for gameplay feel. For some reason it almost felt too smooth, and I still had a feeling of disconnect with the system.

Even with only the RGB inputs, the graphics were definitely nice. I tried out the VGA adapter that I have, but my TV wouldn't accept the video mode that the system was trying to use. Once I find more of my games, most of them are boxed up since we're hopefully moving in the near future, I'll have to get an S-Video cable and try out the system with that as well.

Camera Angles

2008-04-08T08:57:00.002-04:00

It's been over 10 years since the advent of 3-dimensional gaming. Games like Tomb Raider "redefined gaming" back in the day. Since those times the concept of the camera angle has plagued me. I personally hated "Tomb Raider", because I could never get the camera where I felt that I had a good view of the obstacle and could work with it. These games were early in the genre of 3D gaming, so a little bit of that has to be allowed. Some experiments work, some do not.

Now that it's 2008, I would expect that "modern" games would have been able to take what works, and make it work better. But it seems that most of the games lately that I really enjoy end up being plauged by the "camera angle" monster. Games like Lego Star Wars - one of my current favorite games to play - is horrific with it. In Co-Op it can become frustrating enough to make you not want to play anymore at times, when you get locked in an area because your partner and you are running in opposite directions. Crackdown is a lot of fun, but every so often the camera moves to an impossible angle and trying to jump, move the camera, and position your guy so he lands on a 2" wide pipe so you can get through a rooftop race is.. frustrating (not to mention requires you to use extra appendages somehow).

In years before the birth of "3D gaming", the camera angle was generally fixed - you had top scrolling and side scrolling, or top down, or mostly top down views of the field, and they were relatively static. Sometimes the angle kinda sucked, but it was what it was, and you dealt with it. Now you have a roving camera that is following you, it dynamically changes what the field of vision looks like and how you are looking at an obstacle while you are trying to get around it. Sometimes just being "too close" to the focal point can make the rest of the field almost obscured to the player. Star Trek Legacy is plagued by this issue.

It seems that the 2D games came out of infancy rather quickly, and had AAA titles to the point where they were cliche. 3D games are still trying to find the camera angle to properly view what a AAA title can really be.

Whining gets you free stuff

2008-03-12T11:53:00.001-04:00

I started thinking about this a few weeks ago, when the article about the guy that sent his xbox to be repaired and lost all his signatures and custom artwork on it. I had been talking about how complaining on the Internet has become the easiest way possible to get free stuff in the real world. In the example of the guy that sent back his xbox - would you trust a semi-valuable non-replaceable item to a huge box-shop? The 360 repair technique is a difficult thing, because of how semi-unique the condition is currently. I've had plenty of irreplaceable items such as signed books, baseball cards and photographs over time.

If he wanted to continue to use his 360 instead of having to replace it and make the other case a complete collector's item that he left on a shelf, he was going to have to send it in for repair. That isn't to say that any level of risk would be associated with it. The folks that do the repair aren't going to really be looking at what the note said that he sent with it, or really any promises that were made. I wouldn't be surprised if that case isn't sitting off to the side where someone replaced it with a stock case because they liked the artwork.

And we get to the current news that Bungie is going to do "something special" for this guy because he lost the signatures and case, and happened to whine about it on the Interwebs. Everyone feels good. How many folks do you think are going to do something special to their xbox now before they send it off in hopes of getting something cool and free?

Now we get to where this one gets interesting to me personally - I blogged months ago about how I felt that the Live Search Club service was really just a scam, because I got tagged as being a cheater on the service. I chalked up the experience as a growing opportunity and went on my merry way. I still believe that Microsoft could save themselves millions by just requiring that the players pay S&H for the products that they win. It would keep the folks just looking for a fast buck from trying to cheat as much, and it would help to speed up the processing time for the requests. That said, I relegated that I was not going to see any of the rewards that I had signed up for.

Then last week, out of the blue, I get a package from Microsoft. Much to my surprise, it was a copy of Kameo: Elements of Power from Live Search Club. Taking as a win that I actually got something from the time and effort spent on the service, I'm relatively pleased. The next day, I end up getting "Project Gotham Racing 3" in the mail from Live Search Club. Now, I was supposed to get these rewards in mid-October, and it was early December that I was told I was getting nothing. Now it's March and I mysteriously get 2 rewards, after a spike in my blog shows that people were sure interested in my "Club Live Scam" blog entry. While I didn't get everything, I sure can't complain about getting something at this point.

And, I can claim myself as one of the masses that whined on the Internet and got free stuff.

Uneducated Parents

2008-03-10T11:43:00.003-04:00

There are at least 2 or 3 different things I want to post up about right now, and at least one of them I was planning on writing on this morning, but this one took the cake for me.

http://www.wlns.com/Global/story.asp?S=7985534&nav=5D7v

This mother is upset because she didn't do any work on her part to make sure her kids were playing safely on the Internet, and is now angry at Microsoft's Live service.

"Jennifer says the damage to her children from this incident has already been done... And she has banned her children from using X-Box Live to protect them from becoming prey to online predators."

This is just obscenely idiotic on the part of the parent. They failed to do their job, trusting it to a large corporation blindly, and are upset enough to fly off the handle. If the kids had burned themselves on the stove, would they blame GE? I'm guessing the answer is yes.

The "best response" that this parent could do is use this opportunity as a learning experience and a chance to teach her children. Yes, they got to see someone's "naughty bits", and I'd assume they were male instead of female naughty bits. They'll see 'em again sometime. They didn't get contacted to meet somewhere, they didn't get harmed. To me it would be a good way to introduce them about how important it is to be careful with what they say and do online, and how to act. It also would be a good learning experience for her to go out online, or offline for that matter, and research how to keep her kids safe on the Internet. It's not the nice happy playland full of only fuzzy animals, there are terrors that lurk there. The terrors have lurked on the Interwebs much longer than the ideals of fuzzy little woodland creatures in a nice garden.

Taking a step back, and I don't think at any point I'm going to defend not only what she did in reaction nor what she did beforehand, but the article never says what ages the kids were playing, or what games they had been playing. My kids have non-live enabled accounts on my 360, and they play on those accounts. That said, at some point I'm sure they are going to be interested in having live accounts created, or something equivalent to that. I'm sure at some point the "picto-chat" feature in the DS will become an issue when we're traveling, or once they have their own email addresses that they will get something they really shouldn't. As a Father, and generically as a parent, my role is to protect my children. This extends to while we are at parks, around the house, and now online. There are monsters out there looking to exploit them, and it's not going to go away just because they can't use their 360 online anymore. The best I can hope for is to protect them while they are young, and educate them along the way so that they can make good educated decisions for themselves as they grow up.

Not just take their toys away because I'm scared of the boogie man coming around.

Too Much of a good thing?

2008-03-04T08:49:00.003-05:00

So, I was reading an article about the Ratings of Publishers (link), and there is a quote in it that really got me thinking -

Should both of these publisher deals go forward (Activision-Blizzard and EA-Take Two), the result would be two huge publishers who collectively publish over 250 console and handheld games every 12 months, a significant percentage of the market in any given year.

250 titles in a year? And that's just two of the publishers in the business right now! The question is really starting to become "how many games will you really play in a 12-month period?" Now, understandably, I won't play 250 different games in 2008. I probably bought more games in 2007 than I should have, which isn't unusual when I get new game systems. I bought games I don't play, because my kids play them, so that adds some. But how many games really can be put out by the industry each year that are worth playing? It's pretty historic that outside of the "ultra-classic games" like the original Super Mario Brothers or Sonic the Hedgehog - and I mean the 1991 and 1992 releases - people don't flock to buy "bargain" games. So how many various titles can you really expect to be bought in a calendar year per person. If you look at the software "take rate" per console, I think you get a pretty clear understanding of "not that freaking many" - Microsoft boasts that the 360 has a somewhere around 7 titles per console sitting on a shelf. So, people who bought the 360 have bought on average 3 titles per year since the console's release. That includes such "AAA" titles as Halo3, Gears of War, Rainbow 6 Vegas, Rock Band, Guitar Hero 2 and 3, Rainbow Six Vegas, Project Gotham 3 and 4, Forza 2, Mass Effect, BioShock, Call of Duty 2, 3, and 4, along with others that I could spend an hour listing off. I listed 15 titles that I would consider the "hot games" for just 1 system, many of which came out in the last 12 months.

You have to add in that currently there are at least 6 unique systems to consider (PC, 360, PS3, Wii, DS, PSP). So let's do quick math - figure on the top end that the average for all systems is at least 5 each per year. That gets us to 30 titles bought per "complete family unit" - meaning if a family had all 6 systems that they would have bought around 30 games in a year. That's a lot of games to play through, especially if they are all long-playing games like RPG's which can be expected to have 100+ hours to playtime. Then realize that Activision, Vivendi (aka Blizzard),
EA and Take Two pumped out a combined 250 titles last year alone. That's a lot of games to put out on shelves to be considered for purchase. And that's just 4 of the major publishers, of which there are nearly 70 unique publishers out there.

It all comes down to - how many games can you really play in a year, I mean really? And how many gamers go back 1+ year to get "platinum hits" or spend the time to replay that really awesome game from 2-3 years ago? Replay value is gone, because we have so many other games out there to vie for our attention.

I think I need to dig out my Dreamcast soon... or maybe my Saturn.

Internet Security Police State

2008-02-19T08:13:00.004-05:00

It seems weird to me how much in the Internet has changed, for many people, over the past 10 years. It used to be that the end user was considered an innocent victim on the Internet, and that the network had to protect them against the attacks that they would find themselves under on an almost daily basis. What's happened, however, is that the average computer that the end user uses has become as much a part of the attacker's life as it is a part of the end user's life. Security used to be relatively easy - you keep the attackers out at your main entrance points, whether you call it your upstream peers or drains or "tubes"... okay - most actual professionals would never call it tubes. Now you have to take the security stand that every end user device is a zombie of a larger evil foe somewhere in the ether, and you need to protect yourself against everyone. It's sad that if you don't take this stance you are not only endangering your customers, but yourself to being subjected to denial of service attacks, or worse.

That said, now this great free open area to express new ideas and new concepts is quickly turning into a police state. Providers are frantically attempting to protect themselves, as well as their customers. The cost of this protection? Freedom on the 'web. Then here comes the US Government trying to make sure that the Internet stays "free" by the push of legislation for "net neutrality", the strong-arm tactic to say that internet providers should not restrict, limit, or prioritize the traffic coming into a cusotmers machine. So the attacker in the eastern block who has is zombie army trained on you, sending thousands of packets attempting to find a weakness in your defenses, is actually be helped by the federal government. Why? Because your best line of defense would be a Service Provider that could stand up and take actions to block the attacks for you.

Many providers have blocked ICMP for nearly a decade now. Since this is restricting information on the internet, would they have to open this up? Can you filter attacks before the attack's destination to mitigate effects?

I fear a landmark court case in the next 5 years where a major hacking organization somehow is able to sue because their packets are being blocked by a firewall not at the destination site. Until there are wholesale changes to how information is shared on the internet, it should be considered an inherently hostile environment. I know it's a cliche to say "just because I'm paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't out to get me". But man, it's true.

It Prints money...

2008-02-15T10:26:00.003-05:00

This is going to be a rant outside of my normal, probably cross-linking to various comics that I feel are appropriate for the commentary if I feel I need to. Several of the gaming web-comics (go figure I read web comics about the game industry) have been using the phrase "it prints money" the last few weeks. That is a very interesting comment, and one that I think speaks volumes to the consumer brainwashing in this country.

Take this article from gamespot about a new Guitar Hero game - Guitar Hero: Aerosmith. I'm a huge Aerosmith fan, and have been for a quite a while now. Rockin' Rollercoaster is that much better because it has Aerosmith music playing as you are twirling through darkness. I've been to their concerts, I buy their albums. But this is taking it a stretch. To have an entire game in the "Guitar Hero" genre dedicated to Aerosmith is the epitome of exploitation of a franchise, and it's fan-base, to me. And I'm talking Aerosmith as much as Guitar Hero. In today's day and age there really isn't a reason to put out a disc like this. Rock Band has shown with a smaller customer base a take rate on Download Content of almost 3:1 versus the GH3 franchise. Why is that?

Why is there a need for a new "Mario Party" game every 12-18 months? Why do we need to be incessantly pushed on with a new Madden each year, that the value of plummets faster than the value of your new car as you drive it off the lot. I know this is a shock for many of the rabid gamers out there, but Microsoft really did do a lot of things right with the xbox and the 360. The concept of episodic content is becoming a reality now for console gamers, because they have a massive storage device on the unit. XBL and PSN (xbox live and playstation network) are competing because Microsoft starting using a hard drive to be able to use for content. Now the push needs to be on to stop having episodic content be delivered by a disc, but rather by digital download. And if they want to press a disc with the update and put it in GameStop for $10 as well, even better!

The need for gamers today to wake up and realize that they need to spend their money wisely on games that aren't just a rehash with one new widget every 12-18 months should be on the rise. I don't see it happening right now, rather I see a new breed of gamer getting inducted in the "exploitation of the consumer" plight that we've had for ages.

Hopefully the tide is turning...

for reference on how I feel the gaming companies think about their consumers, here is the Penny Arcade that fortells of the impending pillage of the Guitar Hero franchise:

Crackdown review

2008-02-14T10:15:00.003-05:00

At the behest of one of my best friends, I picked up the 360 game "CrackDown" last weekend. I had an additional 25% off coupon for used games at GameStop, and figured it was a good cheap title, worth giving a shot. This has to be the most under-rated "Platinum Hits" game that I've played in recent memory. I remember the "bleh" reviews it got, and the demo really doesn't give the game much of a chance to see just how much fun it is.

The aspect of the game is this - you are a super agent that is tasked with cleaning up Metropolis , er Pacific City, of the crime that fills the streets. As you go through the game, you not only can advance what weapons you have by taking them away from the bad guys, but your skills increase. Each skill requires a different set of tactics - Jumping, Driving, Strength, Explosives and Firearms. Some tactics, such as sniping from way up high to folks down low, give you bonuses to multiple skills at once.

The game truly shines when one of two things happen - you spend 800msp to get the expansion pack for it, or you get about 2/3 of the way through it and really start getting good weapons and your skills are high. The expansion probably isn't quite worth 800msp (or about $10), but it does add a lot of nice gameplay from what I can see.

One of the truly unique aspects of the game is that you can co-op the game, but not be forced to even play together! Thus you can be in completely different parts of the game world, and just be using the game as a way to chat with the other players, and ask for assistance at varying points.

The graphics are a bit on the "cartoony" side, but the engine is rather smooth. I've managed to get the game world to the point where it slows down from time to time, but in general even with lots of explosions and enemies everywhere the game run nicely. There are some control issues, especially while jumping, where I don't feel like I'm doing a great job of controlling the character, but they are minimal. And driving with a control pad is just not my favoritest thing in the universe, but I do okay with it.

Overall I would give this game at least a B+ for the first time through, with enough attainable extras in the achievements to really have fun with it. They set side things like climbing to the top of the main tower, a dizzying height, and then jumping off it safely to the ground, as a challenge to the player. They added a mind number amount of jump and drive challenges to the game for added bonus, and collection orbs all over the place. It does contain swear words, and some pretty graphic violence, body juggling honestly was fun to unlock, but nothing that a Teen really couldn't get over. This is a case where I think the M rating probably isn't justified, save for maybe the language that the NPC's spit out every now and again.

2008-02-12T11:06:00.000-05:00

Every so often I get into feelings where I remember specific poems or songs. Today this one is just clearly in my mind...

The Road Not Taken - Robert Frost

TWO roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth; 5

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same, 10

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back. 15

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Fighting Technology

2008-02-05T08:14:00.000-05:00

To say I'm a gadget geek is probably the understatement of the century. I love to play with new technology. The fact that it took nearly 5 years for me to finally break down and get a PDA phone is absolutely amazing. Of course, in the course of the last decade I've had 5 different PDA's - the original Palm Pilot, Palm III, Palm V, Palm Tungsten T, and a HP iPaq. None of them have been perfect, but the biggest problem with being a gadget geek is carry space. I'm not one that wants to carry a "man purse" around, but at one point to satisfy my various gadget geekiness I would have had to have a space for my PDA, a cell phone, a PSP, and an iPod. I would have looked like Luke after keeping the Stormtrooper utility belt...

So, I finally caught up with the SmartPhone age, and my phone isn't just my phone anymore. What I've found, as I find every time I get into my gadget geek mode, is that technology never quite works the way I really want it to. My first goal was to replace my phone and pda into a single device. That accomplishment went pretty flawlessly with the Samgsung SCH-i760 that I purchased. It's a really nice device, and everything I've actually gotten to work has done so with a high level of quality. The device feels nice on the hand, doesn't feel "plastic", connects to email easily and navigates nicely. So goal 1 is complete, 1 device removed from batman's utility belt.

Goal 2 should be just as simple - replace the iPod. Now, I have more than 12 gigs worth of music on my iPod, so I already know that I won't be 100% replacing the device. That said, I took a real hard look at my music usage and realized that a 4gig card would at least work for the time being, although an 8gig card would have been nice. Still, a 4gig card is about $50 over at Best Buy, so I go that route. What I found over the course of a day is that (from what I can gather) most WM6 devices currently cannot read the "MicroSDHC" standard by default. Luckily some blokes on the interwebs have come up with a patch that makes it work. Took a bit of work to get the file onto the phone, but once it was installed and I rebooted, voila! 4gig storage card works. I've put music to it, and it works well. Goal 2 (mostly) completed.

Goal 3 was to replace the PSP. Now I sold my PSP a while ago because I just didn't use it - it was the last thing that was just too much to carry around. Once I got the 4gig card installed technically I was done with this goal, but here's where the hitch really came in. Most of my video is on my Vista Home Premium machine - I use Windows Media Center to push videos to my 360, and it does an admirable job at that. So now I need to sync up my phone to Vista so I can transfer the videos. After 2 days of spare time used towards it, I think I'm almost as close to getting that to work as I was before I bought the device. Things just don't work right - the driver updates take 45 minutes or more to install. Once my PDA is connected I get "error" on the screen with no explanation of what happened. Trying to uninstall the PDA's device driver from the control panel greets me with a 12 hour "uninstalling" window.

So now I fight technology to do the geeky things I really want to do. It's the same fight I had with the iPod and the PSP, and the PDA over the years, just with a new device. There is a part of me that relishes the challenge, and a part of me that really gets discouraged that technology is never "all that and a bag of chips" for me - I always want things that do more than the designers intended, and end up finding the seedier side of the device.

It's what I'm good at.

Challenger

2008-01-28T10:29:00.001-05:00

It was today in history - January 28, 1986, that the Space Shuttle Challenger was lost during lift-off. I can still remember the day, where I was, what I was doing.

I grew up on the "Space Coast" of Florida. Just 30 minutes from the Kennedy Space Center. When I was growing up the school board made it a ritual that when the shuttle got past the final hold we'd have an impromptu "fire drill" so the whole school would go outside and watch. 51-L was different: the schools weren't allowed to do the fire drill routine anymore, and Challenger was the first shuttle that we didn't go outside to watch.. until someone who was outside came back in a panic because it had blown up. I personally couldn't believe it, didn't want to believe it. I went through my entire time in Jr. High without seeing the shuttle fly again, and it wasn't until my sophmore year in high school that they launched again. It was years that redefined who I was, and what I was passionate about. But at that next launch, there was a fire drill...

It's said that the Challenger mishap was a prime example of the "Abilene Paradox", interesting read on all the things that created the perfect storm of mishap.

10 years

2008-01-23T10:04:00.001-05:00

I can't believe it's taken me almost a week to post this up. Last Thursday was our 10th wedding anniversary. Definitely a milestone. 17 Jan, 1998 was one of the most stressful and delightful days in my life. I can hardly believe it's been 10 years since that day. It was the eye in the storm for me, in the middle of a job where I was working entirely too hard, trying to figure out how to manage, and then how to be a good husband.

Things haven't been smooth, nothing gone "according to plan", but we manage to survive and to love each other. And that's what it all about.

Keeping promises

2008-01-15T13:56:00.001-05:00

It's one of those things that you don't think about all that much, but when I do I personally put a large value on the keeping of promises. I attempt to not make promises that I either cannot or will not keep.

So, a couple of weekends ago I came into a conflict - I put aside money each month to re-up our Disney passes, and not time for renewal was wanning. We are supposed to be moving to South Carolina, and spending almost $1400 on Annual Passes to a theme park in Florida sounds awefully foolish. We're going to be short on money because of the current housing crisis, too. Heck, we were supposed to be up there already for all intents and purposes, but the financial aspects just haven't been where it makes sense to go.

One thing I had promised myself, and in proxy my kids, was that if we were going to start getting the passes again it wasn't going to be a 1 year deal; That is, I promised myself that as long as we lived in Florida I would do everything in my power to continue getting the passes. I set up a CD and put money away each month to cover the costs. I budgeted correctly for it, and had the money in hand.

That money could have gone towards a lot of things we need right now, but that would have been as bad as lying to the kids to their face. I knew what that money was for, and we haven't moved yet. Two showings in six months has a way of changing your mind on the risks you'll take leaving a house.

The question always comes down to - when given the tempatation to not keep your promise and do what "makes more sense" at the time, do you cave.. or do you go through with the promise even if it's not the best idea? I'm sure that in the years since that God has looked down at the earth and pondered another flood, but that rainbow is our assurance of his love for us even if "every inclination of his heart is evil from childhood."

Sometimes the best decision isn't the most sensible one, it's the one that shows true character.

Christmas at "the World"

2007-12-26T13:43:00.000-05:00

Now, while I don't necissarily have memories of it fully, I've been going to Walt Disney World since I was 13 months old. Over the course of that time I have many memories, from traveling on the Monorail to see EPCOT Center before it opened (the Monorail didn't even stop at the station, just slowed down a bit), to seeing President Regan's innagural parade. I spent days on end inside of "the Living Seas" when it first opened on a miriad of various school field trips. I snuck over to Disney/MGM to see the new "Star Tours" ride when on one of said field trips with friends. The year Christy and I were married we went to opening day of "Animal Kingdom", heck we spent our honeymoon at Disney's Boardwalk resort! I remember at Grad Nite '92 when Splash Mountain wasn't open just yet.. and having to wait to experience the ride until years later. Some of my favorite, and most cherished memories have revolved around Disney World, and I feel they will continue to do so for years to come despite the move.

Because of said move, which is immenant, we are no longer going to be annual passholders. Christy has been a passholder since they started doing passes back in the early 80's. She's a charter member, and not having them I know is affecting her. I had passes back as a child, but I didn't start having full annual passes until we were married. This is the second time we've come up to the fact that we cannot justify the passes, and each time it seems to get more difficult. I promised myself, and in all realities the kids, that I would continue to provide for us to go to Disney as long as we lived so close. Well, now we are moving, and the money we'd spend on this year's passes would be a big chunk of what we'll need to spend on things for them at the new house. The passes really aren't a good option for us, again. Since they expire on the 6th, I decided that we should do something I have never dared to do: go to the Magic Kingdom on Christmas Day.

It's the busiest day of the Disney Year. They supposedly close the park by 10am, because it's at (or possibly over) capacity by that time. We get told by employees to be there no later than 7:30, to insure we can get in. Thus Christmas Eve we have our day to open presents and have family time, and we set the alarms for 5:30am, setting out our clothes for the next morning. The alarm goes off all too early, and the kids are up like a shot. We manage to get there a little after 7, and I'm expecting huge lines of cars and massive lines just to get in the park.. but amazingly they don't appear. We parked as close as I've ever been without being with a Disney employee, and we had the time of our lives. We went on more rides than I think we have in the last 3 trips this year, and went to have dinner at 3:15 at the Wispering Canyon Cafe at the Wilderness Lodge. By 6pm we're on our way home, and while exhausted, filled with memories that all of us with cherish for years to come.

Net Bloomers

2007-12-12T12:07:00.000-05:00

One thing I was realizing this morning while I was getting ready to go to work, was how much my life has revolved, nay developed around the internet. I can remember a time when mailing letters and spending $200 on a phone bill to call home from school was normal, but I can't fathom spending that money now. For the past 15 years my life has been determined, both for good and for bad, by the growth of the Internet. I set my mom up with CompuServe so she could email my brother and I at school, and save on postage and the costs of a phone call. I used instant messaging well before there was such a thing - we used the Unix "talk" function from server to server.

Wanted to write about something, and have it where friends from all over could read about it? Create a web page! Web logs hadn't really been invented yet, but folks were doing it; they had to code it in HTML, or maybe create up a perl script-based site that they could just post updates too. No fancy web-2.0 to make it do. My first adult jobs were helping folks connect to the Internet - I had an internship at Harris and a student job at UCF that were based around TCP/IP and getting folks online.

First job out of college? I was a "telecommunications coordinator"... it was more of an IT job than a router job, but I got exposed to USRobotics dialup equipment, Cisco routers, and even more deeply into TCP/IP than I thought was possible.

I've been a web server administrator, a router jockey, and a planner. I turned up DSL when you had to order "alarm circuits" from the local phone company and not tell them what it was for. I rattled the sabers to have the "little" ISP I worked for be able to resell ADSL with one of the biggest phone companies in the US. I learned ATM, BGP, OSPF, RIP and a variety of other acronyms by necessity, I'd go do searches on AltaVista for resources and read. I didn't have the time or the money to go get my CCIE, although I wanted it. Now, while I wouldn't refuse getting it, I don't see the value in it anymore.

In a world that values "get in and get out as quickly as you can", I've been with 3 companies since I graduated from UCF in 1996. I've grown each companies brand, I've put a piece of myself into everything I've done, and I can say that I have some level of pride on what I created. Not that the networks were ever pretty, or the best, but that with nothing I've been repeatedly a part of organizations that succeed.

I know that many like to place people like me into "Generation X", but I really think that we are the "Net Bloomers"; we don't always get the glory, but we have been what the Internet grows on. We've been the early adopters, the ones that see the need for a service and create it. Once others see folks like us doing something, they create the business model for it. Much like the hobbiest that created PC's from kits in the 70's, we created services for the Internet with basic building blocks.

Maybe that's worth writing about, maybe it's just something good to keep around to read myself later on, or to have as a written document to give to my grandchildren about the "early days of the Internet generation(s)". Considering that people 50 years ago could barely hear each others voices across town, you really have to wonder what things will be like 50 years from now.

Charlie Brown...

2007-12-06T07:48:00.000-05:00

I'm sure there will be a day when the name "Charlie Brown" doesn't automatically bring up pictures of the nation's childhood. I'm sure that when I have grandchildren, they will remember it as a strip from long ago, not something in the vernacular of the society. That said, I think that Scott Kurtz hit the nail on the head with his strip this week.

Everyone feels like Charlie Brown from time to time; The lovable boy that never got mail in his mailbox, or had their own personal Lucy pull the ball out from underneath them at the last minute. So many of these pictures I don't even have to close my eyes to see. Days like yesterday, with the Club Live garbage, definitely made me feel like the lovable looser that can't seem to get a bone to chew on, let alone make it big. Thing is, I'm not Charlie Brown, I get to kick that football every so often. I get to feel that joy. Scott did a great job by letting Cole "kick the ball" every so often, because it makes Cole more real. He gets to not just be a consummate lovable looser, but a person.

As I've grown older, franchises like Peanuts and Garfield have become less a part of my life. Mostly I feel like they are marketing cliché's; created in order to make the author money, not for the joy of the character. They became indentured servants of the creator, forced to go through their "life", being documented, never getting to have a full set of emotions or expressions, but instead to live out the same experiences and never grow. You know, a comic strip sitcom, or soap opera. These always make me feel empty, like eating cotton candy; it tastes good, but in the end you don't feel full.

Maybe I need to start writing more about when I kick the ball, instead of just random thoughts. I know that I get to more often than I realize. The focus would do me good.

“The longer I live, the more I realize the impact of attitude on life. Attitude, to me, is more important than facts. It is more important than the past, the education, the money, than circumstances, than failure, than successes, than what other people think or say or do. It is more important than appearance, giftedness or skill. It will make or break a company... a church... a home. The remarkable thing is we have a choice everyday regarding the attitude we will embrace for that day. We cannot change our past... we cannot change the fact that people will act in a certain way. We cannot change the inevitable. The only thing we can do is play on the one string we have, and that is our attitude. I am convinced that life is 10% what happens to me and 90% of how I react to it. And so it is with you... we are in charge of our Attitudes.”
Charles Swindoll

Club Live scam...

2007-12-05T15:36:00.000-05:00

I'm not even sure how to post this one up, I'm so angry right now. Back in July I was surfing around and found out about Microsoft's "Club Live" offering, where you could play word puzzles and win tickets that can be used to "purchase" Microsoft products, including copies of Vista, a Zune or maybe even a xbox360!

Needless to say, I was excited. I already had my sites on a 360, and this was a great way to "earn" one without plunking down what was then almost $400 for the pro set, plus this came with a few games. My wife and I both were playing, so our household would only use one account (and follow the EULA), and we were working towards the goal of getting a 360. Christy spent more time than me working on it, actually; she figured she's get it for me as a Birthday present. She was 10 times faster than me playing the games, and she really liked the word puzzles in general.

Fast forward to mid-August. We've gone through all the puzzles on the games we liked to play, everything else was just not fun for us to play. I also started evaluating the value of the packages, and came to the realization that I really wanted the 360 elite, with it's 120gig drive, instead of the pro. So I settled on getting a wireless controller and a few games from the reward list. Figured, "at least I got something worthwhile and enjoyable from my time"; all good. The order status says it takes 30-60 days to review the order and fulfill it, and I get a confirmation that my order should ship on Oct 12. Fine, Fine.. I can wait.

Slow motion to November. No fulfillment; no emails; nothing. I email support for a status, in return I receive an auto-responder with answers to "frequently asked questions"; I sent a response (as the email states I should), and receive no responses from my queries. Re-check the information, and I guess in September they started saying it would be 120 days to get prizes. 120 days is mid-November, only a few weeks away. Already have my 360, looking forward to the 2nd controller; figure I can wait.

All but stop until Monday. Original date and 120-day period that is now mentioned in the T&C long gone. Decided to send an email over to CNET, since they cover all sorts of things Microsoft related. Got a great response from Elinor Mills, saying that the Microsoft PR contact she had would like my account name so he can have someone research it. Good, good.. maybe finally I'll get somewhere with this order.

Leap up to today. I get an email at 12:30am today saying they are reviewing my order with fulfillment to see what the status is. Good, good. Then this afternoon I get the following email -

"Dear Live Search Club Participant:

Thank you for your patience while our Technical Support Team has further reviewed and re-evaluated the game play history on your account. Upon review of your account, it appears that a number of the games played meet our criteria of unfair game play and violates our terms and conditions (http://club.live.com/TermsAndConditions.htm) resulting in a cancellation of your order.

Best Regards,

Live Search Club Customer Support"

Now, the terms and conditions they speak of state -

"You must comply with the Terms and Rules, as determined by Microsoft, to receive a Ticket or Reward. You must not use any bot, cheat code or other automated way to do an Activity or participate in the Program. You may not use more than one user account to avoid caps or other restrictions on Activities and Tickets you can earn."

Best I can figure, I broke it because both Christy and I played on the same account. But, if we played on our own accounts we would have broken the "You may not use more than one user account" clause, since we are in the same household.

This smells, sounds and acts like a scam to me. The way the T&C is written it's clear they can just cancel all the orders done, because if you play the games "too fast", you must be cheating. If you have folks in your "Household" play on one account, you are cheating. If you each have your own account, you are "cheating".

All of this over 3 xbox360 games and a wireless controller. I'm very disappointed in Microsoft, and how they are handling this service. 180 days with no way for the customer to be in contact with them, and then claim they are cheating. No way to spin around this; it really makes me question Microsoft's ethics.

The sad thing is, I love my 360... but if I had gotten this treatment before I got the 360, I wouldn't have bought one. Makes me really question all future Microsoft products, too.

Partial Review - Rock Band

2007-11-27T11:31:00.000-05:00

I'm going to continue to write more of my feelings about various games that I am playing/have played over time down. I guess I could say I got Rock Band for my birthday, but it would have been an 'unbirthday present', as I was the one that went out on the 20th, bought it, and brought it home.

Rock band is a very simple overall concept game - you simulate the concept of a Rock Band. You get drums, a guitar, and a microphone. You can connect an additional guitar to "round out" the band as well. Each part of the band has a rhythm game associated with it, and while you can work through the "solo careers" in the game, the primary focus is on the "party game" aspect when you get 4 people together to play.

I'd give the single player game minimal reviews, as it's pretty basic. I've completed guitar on easy and medium so far, and done a little bit with hard. Working on adding that 5th fret button is a bit of work. I'm working through the easy mode on Drums, and done a few songs on the Mic. All of them seem to do well. The Hardware is not "professional quality", but so far mine's been solid. Some folks have complained about various issues, but I haven't had anything that I'd say is a problem. EA has already stated a 60-day warrenty is in effect on the hardware, so if folks find a flaw, they can get it replaced by EA. And from what the boards state, they are being rather quick to respond and replace equipment.

As stated above, the real draw to the game is the "Band World Tour" multiplayer. You can get up to 4 people total onto the game and play the various parts of the game. And this is really where this game completely shines. There are parts where if you really want to get serious with it you can get achievements and unlock all sorts of stuff, but in the end what you are really looking to do is have a good time with some friends.

Where this game doesn't shine is in the fanaticism of the folks on the board. I've made a few dozen posts on there, but honestly the game has gotten overly competitive for many. There could be a draw where you wouldn't look to have fun, but rather "recruit" people to play in order to get those last few achievements and unlock the last little bit. With a lack of true online co-op play for Band World Tour, the ability to "rock out" with friends from around the globe is likewise missing, which is a bit disappointing, as I have friends all over. It would be a blast to make up an online band that could rock out together online.

There are also a lot of issues with the concept of "cross game" hardware. For the folks that bought both Rock Band and Guitar Hero games, not all the controllers work either way. So you are buying a controller specific to the game, which always hinders the "value" of the package you bought to some level. So the perceived value of buying both Guitar Hero and Rock Band so you could play co-op on both with a significant other is limited as of right now. Hopefully this is a patch away from being fixed on both the Guitar Hero and Rock Band sides of the fence.

Overall, I'd give this game a 4.5 out of 5 stars or something if I had to rate it, although it's probably more of an arbitrary number more than anything else. I've had a heck of a lot of fun with it, and there is a pretty large amount of replay value even without the download content that is available. Being able to add more songs to play will only increase it. I'm not sure with the pricing of the download content if the draw will be there to buy it for everyone, but they are looking to have a great selection of additional songs to pick from. The drawbacks are needing to find extra people to come over to play, and I'm not even sure that having the online co-op would really help that all that much. The game is definitely an evolution well beyond what the "Guitar Hero" games did, but it's probably still very early in the genre to tell where it'll go. There is plenty of room in the industry for multiple games of this type.

It's interesting to watch the evolution from Pong to PS3/360/Wii how the gaming world has changed, and is still changing, focus. The need for new markets and new people to be interested in games, and the use of games to introduce folks to new ways of thinking, is amazing.

Parental Involvement

2007-11-14T09:25:00.001-05:00

This is going to end up being a double-post day for me, a rarity indeed! Gaming is one of my passions, and I really enjoy watching my kids spend time enjoying a pastime I love. With that in mind, it's difficult to find games that I find appropriate for a 4, 5 and 8 year old to really enjoy. Our oldest, since she can read, is easier to find games for, but they are all a challenge. I mean, do I really want to see my daughters in Halo 3 deathmatches?

While it was (and still is) humorous to watch our kids playing the demo of "Virtua Fighter 5" on our 360, we actively try to make sure that they are playing age-appropriate games. I do admit though, watching our youngest play "boxing" and actually do a pretty good job in VF5 is interesting... but I digress.

There are many games out there that are not for a younger audience anymore. The days of mostly "innocent" games have long been gone (although a topic for a later day will be how much I appreciate the classics returning, even if I have to pay for them again). Outside of a couple of games on the Live Arcade service for the 360, my kids haven't had a collection of xbox games that I feel comfortable to play. I spent time looking at review sites, but they focus on the "Halo 3's" of the community much more than the "Dora the Explorer"s. And even though it may be a kid friendly theme, most of the "Everyone" games end up being poorly done because they know parents will end up blindly getting it because it has a popular kid's show on it. So you plunk down $50 for a game they don't enjoy, and don't play.. and then go out and get them a game that's not really appropriate because it's what they want to play and you know nothing about it...

Then there's a site called What they Play (http://www.whattheyplay.com). This is a site dedicated to being a resource for parents to help them make good decisions about games for their kids. It's still new on the scene, but I have really high hopes that a community will grow around the seed they've planted, and good quality of parental reviews will prosper and help both gaming and non-gaming parents to get involved with their kids on what games they play, and maybe even join in on some fun!

Lighting your Soul Ablaze

2007-11-14T09:16:00.000-05:00

During lunch the other day, a coworker of mine was talking about having to find something that "sets his soul on fire". That got me to really thinking about what I'm passionate about, and how I'm living my life.

These are deep thoughts, and things I don't typically like to be forced into thinking about. In fact, when I usually bring myself to think about these things I tend to become rather melancholy, to the point of near depression. Am I doing what really sets my soul ablaze? Is what I'm doing in my personal, spiritual, and professional life in line with what God wants for me? Where will I be in 5, 10, 20 years? Is it what I'm doing now? What I can say is that this time I seem to have a much more grounded response to these questions that typically.. maybe I'm growing up. I sure hope not!

Where this interpersonal exploration took me was to a place where I seldom really go - self acceptance. I typically spend my time looking at my life and wondering what I'm doing wrong, not what I've done right. I'm passionate about what I'm doing, and typically "flame out" easily on things because of disillusionment or lack of long-term interest. What I can tell you is that if I'm passionate about it, it consumes me. It doesn't matter if it's work, or church, or home.. if it's what's lighting my soul ablaze I will be into it 100%.

What I've come to realize is that I am doing what I love to do, which is dream a better dream. The work I do is all about how to make the network better and improve the company, and I'm pretty dang good at it. While I get upset about where we might be in 5-10 years, I get the chance to dream and research where we should be, and try to help steer our direction. That's really an incredible opportunity. I've had the chance to help build 2 different internet-based services from small online presences. When I first started working here our aggregate bandwidth for all of our customers was under 10meg. We are almost to the 2-gig mark now. Customers are thought of in tens of thousands, not just tens like when I started. It's comforting to see what we've accomplished as a company.

And maybe that's what really sets my soul ablaze. The opportunity to dream.

Current Gaming Addiction - GH3

2007-11-09T14:35:00.000-05:00

Okay, going to start something new here - what game I'm currently enthralled with. Maybe I'll start posting up reviews of the games I've been playing or something as well in the future, if I can think of a format that I will actually stick to.

Since getting a xbox360 back in September, I have already gone through several games I really like. Currently the game of passion is "Guitar Hero 3", which I'd say that I'm going to get, or have gotten, my $99 worth of money out of.

That said, the game is fun but also limited. I found the unlockable music to be interesting, but not much to repeat. I'd think they would have some level of golden rock song, or interesting co-op song nestled in there that completing the others would tempt you with. I've found a few of those, but in general the song you "buy" with in-game money (not the MicroSoft Points ones) have been by bands I've never heard of, and several of them are in German - which is kinda cool, but not something I'd say is worthy of "unlock" status in a music game.

And probably the worst part of the game should be it's total redeeming factor - Downloadable Content (DLC). The DLC for GH3 is now starting to show up on xboxLIVE, and the pricing on it is way over the top. While the price of MP3's goes down, and the ways you are entitled to use it are increasing, the GH tracks are limited to just inside the game, and cost more than twice the typical MP3 alternative. From a marketing perspective this is just poor design. You have a fixed cost to create the content, and a near zero cost to distribute it. You have a limited customer base for the product, but the price is set at a very limited take rate. Even a simple bystanding thought would make you think that the pricing is out of line if you aren't getting 60-80% take rate on the songs, since you already know the folks that would possibly buy it would be the ones that already plunked down $60 for the game, and maybe bought a special controller to play.

Oh well, I'd still give the game a high score because it's fun, and more than just a couple of hours of fun at that. Christy and I have played it a lot in the past couple of weeks now, and I don't see us really putting another game ahead of it on the play list much... at least until Rock Band comes out on 11/20.

"Constructive" Criticism

2007-10-18T13:09:00.000-04:00

I think I'm finally to a point in my life where I can say that I'm completely and totally fed up with the concept of "constructive criticism". What I mean is, folks trying to "better you" by noting all your flaws. People my entire life have spent hours of my time going over in minute details all the tings I don't do right. This is supposed to make me a better person, because I can focus on these things, right?

The more that I look back on it, the more I feel that what it's really doing is making the other person feel better about themself instead of helping me in the least. People who say they love you, and they care about you, should not casually wound you mentally. They claim it's "for your own good", but they wouldn't fathom actually physically harming you, so why is the psyche that much different?

I feel that for most of my life I've ended up focusing on the things that are "wrong" with myself, things I've done wrong, said wrong, thought wrong. Always wrong, always negative. I end up obsessing about it, and inflicting mental wounds onto myself and my love ones over it. I hide myself away from others over it, I don't want to open myself up for another "shot to the gut". It's self destructive, and I'm tired of it.

For those that think that pointing out someone elses flaws actually helps. It doesn't. It hurts. I think I'd rather have someone physically attack me than keep sniping at my psyche at this point.

Cause at least with a physical attack I don't start hitting myself later because you hit me first.

Money for nothing, Clips for free

2007-10-17T09:47:00.000-04:00

I'm realizing that I don't post up all that much on here these days, but right now I wanted to just write up my feelings on something - free content.

In the age of the Internet, the concept of free has been horridly warped. I don't care if it's movies, music, or video games. I don't care if your are 15 or 55, the problem is the same: folks think that everything on the Internet should be free.

Free television to me is what you get from broadcast signals, and is paid for by the advertisements that you watch. You pay for a cable version of this programming simply because you want to be able to watch a clearer signal, or have more channels available. These stations still have commercials on them, because the channel gets paid by you watching commercials. The costs of distribution are covered, for the most part, in your cable access. Not the production of the shows, or the folks that put together the programming schedule. The cable company gives you a conduit to additional programming that you pay for, but you still pay for the content by commercials.

Radio is free, because you listen to commercials. There are premium radio, where you have more selection and it's commercial-free (well, except for commercials for themselves it seems), but you pay for that expanded selection.

The Internet is NOT free, there is no "broadcast" method to gain access to it for free. What you are paying that $20-50 a month for is the ability to connect into the large web of networks. That gives you no entitlement for anything and everything that is available on the Internet. It gives you a conduit to the world. Why is it that people do not want to understand that the content providers aren't paid by their internet host, but rather that the content has to make money somehow?

Downloading movies, music, television and video games without any level of compensation is illegal: it's no less illegal than you shoplifting from Best Buy a DVD or CD. Yet folks feel entitled because it's the Internet, and everything should be free on the Internet! There are plenty of incredible things that are free on the internet (this blog site is just an example), but not everything is free.

Jr High School

2007-09-06T07:25:00.000-04:00

At 32 years of age, I'm realizing that all I needed to know in order to survive in the business world I learned in Junior High. Now, depending on the size of the school, the lessons are adaptive. In a smaller environment it seems that the interpersonal requirements change as you are forced to do more things and interact with the cliques you don't like on a regular basis. If you happen to be in a really big school, however, the rules definitely change some. People can hide behind reasons that don't make sense, you can not like someone just for who they hang out with or because they like Transformers instead of GI Joe. And I don't mean "I'm not going to hang out with you" type of dislike, I mean decide that the person deserves a wedgie every afternoon at 4. The level of drama seems to be exponential to the number of people in the organization.

You would think that people would have figured out well before their 30's that this type of behavior is disrupting and counter productive in a business environment where it's supposed to be "all about the customer". I guess I learn what happens when I think...

Club Live cheating

2007-08-16T12:47:00.000-04:00

Recently, I found out about Club Live by Microsoft. This is a service that by playing word games that utilize Microsoft's Live Search service you earn up tickets. With those tickets you can get various rewards, including the top reward being an xbox360. Now, I've wanted a 360 for a while, but the price tag has always been a deterant for the amount of enjoyment that I predicted I'd have with it. See, I have a Wii, original xbox, Dreamcast, Saturn, GameCube... well, you get the idea. Another game console is always a bit of a harsh decision at this point, but I really like the concept of the 360 and what it brings to the table. So I start playing, and I've earned up 13,000 "tickets". Now I'm doing some research as I'm running out of games to play (both the Chicktionary and Flexicon games are locked out to me -- seems I've played all the possible puzzles), and I find that folks have been using cheat programs in order to gain multiple copies of the same reward for whatever reason.

So.. because of these cheaters the costs of the rewards have gone up, but the number of puzzles haven't. Thus the people that are actually doing the puzzles to get the rewards are faced with an issue -- some of the rewards may not be attainable. This cheeses me off. The fact that cheaters are ruining the experience for the regular players is something that always upsets me, and this is no exception. Thus, I'm writing the following to Microsoft's Help service, the head of the Live Search Division, Steve Balhmer, and whoever else I can find to send it to. Hopefully I'll get some level of response.

There seems to be a lot of concern in various forums about the cheating that
seems to have occured inside of Club Live, and the impact that it is having on
the players that are playing the games and not using outside programs "cheat"
for them.

My main question is this - is it currently possible to earn
enough points to actually get the xbox 360 bundle reward? I've earned up over
13,000 points, but the games I'm enjoying are telling me that no more puzzles
are available. I'm trying out the new games you have provided, but it seems at
least according to the leader board that you have up there, that the number of
tickets that are required to get the 360 package is unattainable.

I can
fully appreciate the problems that you are experiencing with the service, and I
think that this system is an awesome idea by Microsoft to get traction in
markets where you have recently been struggling. My concern is that the
"cheaters" are going to cost you the folks that are helping out your market
strategy.

I'd suggest that you consider some of the following concepts
that several of us that use the games legitimately have come up with -

1
- impose a rule on the rewards where you can only get a single type of reward
per physical mailing address. In a quick "Live Search" on the topic, I found
numerous message boards where folks are openly stating that they used outside
programs to complete the ticket requirement, and have ordered multiple rewards
to the same address. This includes copies of Windows, Office and Zunes.

2 - impose either shipping & handling or sales tax for the item.
Personally, I would have no issue with paying only the sales tax and/or a
shipping and handling charge for my reward, but for cheaters looking to 'resale'
the item, it would become some level of deterrant.

I'm sure there are
other concepts that you or your loyal customers can come up with that can help
twart these folks that are really ruining the concept of this service, without
having the service itself be disrupted (like it has recently).

Thanks!

--bl

Greenville

2007-06-28T23:10:00.000-04:00

Spent the last 2 days in Greenville, SC. Been talking to folks, and learning about the new "surf & turf" that the two companies have become.

It's amazing how companies can develop 600 miles apart, and still make others welcome and have similar experiences. Trying to figure out "what group would you prefer to be in" has been extremely difficult for me. I'm not one to make decisions easily, and definitely not ones that are as "life impacting" as these. I've been praying about the possibility of change for a while now, but now it comes down to figuring out what God really wants for me. Part of me is worried about making choices and upsetting folks, and part of me is worried about making the "wrong choice". I think, though, that the worst choice would be "not making a choice".

I've had a chance to meet and talk with a bunch of very great people. I'm genuinely excited to think that I will continue to be part of an organization that is providing services folks use every day, and we are "outperforming" the competition. While Mike has stated that "we are the winner", once you see the group of people that are all making things happen, you can sit in your own little world and wonder about it.

After what I've seen... we are the winner. A group this talents and this dedicated to providing a top notch solution will not fail to meet it's goals.

Fostering...

2007-06-06T16:23:00.000-04:00

This was an interesting week, before it started. On Saturday we went out, and ended up signing up to foster a dog from one of the rescue organizations here in Orlando for a week. The intention was to make sure that the dog would acclimate properly to the environment and adopt, but by Sunday night we already had doubts that we were ready for the level of commitment and responsibility that it was going to entail.

The dog's name was "Dakota", and we ended up sending her back this morning to be with the shelter. She was a Shetland Sheepdog "mix", we think with a Japanese Shiba, and was an amazing animal. She had been rescued from a Georgia kill shelter, but she was young. It's amazing that a 5 month old animal would be put down, and couldn't get adopted. She was energetic and definitely adopted us as at least playmates for the little bit of time that we took care of her. For example - she didn't get taken on walks, she took you for runs. Her whole body would wag when she was excited, like when you got home...

We just didn't have the space she needed, and the kids weren't ready for the level of commitment it was going to take. They are used to a cat, and ours is the kind that you can do almost to and she doesn't go bananas to you. The kids are in many ways "spoiled" by that, and I think that Christy and I are as well. She was also a puppy, and even house-broken puppies need a lot of attention and a level of care that is "above and beyond" that an older dog needs or wants. Just to top it off, she was rescued from a kill shelter. I think given enough time, effort, commitment and love, she would have been incredible. Love alone just wouldn't have been enough.

I know that we will look at the "fostering/adopting" process again in the future, but right now I don't think I could. She's only been back at the rescue since around lunchtime, and I already miss her. I missed her before we took her back, but I also knew that it was definitely for the best that she went back. I know she'll make an amazing pet for someone, and someone will love her as much as we do and provide her the things we can. It doesn't mean that I won't miss the time that we had.

MLB vs Slingbox?

2007-06-01T14:36:00.000-04:00

Okay, for the record I think that Major League Baseball jumped the shark a long time ago. This has to be a crowning achievement for them, though. To think, just because someone is watching a game that they didn't pay for on their subscription service (MLB.tv), they want to sue the people that make it possible.

Maybe they should sue Brighthouse or Comcast next. I mean, they are broadcasting the games into people's homes via a cable instead of over the airwaves! How many more people can Major League Baseball disenfranchise and drive away from their revenue stream?

"Popular" Science

2007-05-30T10:36:00.001-04:00

Yes, I know that it's the name of a magazine that's been around since the 50's, or 1872 or whatever. What I'm referring to is the concept of mass consumption of the theories that are put out by researchers while attempting to explain the universe. And boy is it frustrating to read, knowing that folks are hanging onto some of these hypothesis' as fact.

My example for today is the "Wunder Blog" by Jeff Masters. I found the article, and his blog, rather interesting; in fact, I found that the concept that ocean life could play a major role in our climate is astounding. What I found disheartening is the fact that he states in the blog that "While the authors admit that their calculations may have large errors, this research shows that marine life may have a heretofore unappreciated large impact on Earth's climate"; he states that the "proof" of the concept is unsound, but the results are not! This is not the foundation that our scientific "forefathers" set forth, and definitely not a part of any "scientific method" that I've used both in school and outside of school. This is more like the "facts" that religions used in ancient Rome and Greece than anything else, to be honest. There is a hypothesis, some calculations, and a result. But the result is not proof yet, because the calculations are under speculation.

I really don't have a problem with this being spread as a "theory", but sadly most people today have no clue what the difference between theory and fact are anymore. They do not allow their minds to have conflicting concepts and linger on it like a wine connoisseur would let a flavor linger and appreciate it for the possibilities that it has. They take all "theories" as facts, and one cannot overlap another. If the conflict, one must be right, and the other has to be false. This "fast food" science intake is creating a society that really does not want to think for itself, and I fear for that.

Low Country

2007-05-24T10:22:00.001-04:00

I had a chance to spend a few days up in Connecticut last weekend, and it's interesting to really look at places, people and things when you travel. My family is originally from the central part of the state, and we happened to be there to intern my Grandfather's ashes. For those that haven't been there, the Central part of Connecticut is full of large hills (I'm not sure I'd really call them mountains) that consist of a lot of rock. The roads in many places are cut into the sides of these, and at times you'll be on a road and be at rooftop level of the houses just beside you.

Then, you can travel less than an hour, and be to the "low country" of the state. They are not directly on the Ocean, but rather their beaches are on Long Island Sound. You can see Long Island in the distance. There aren't really "waves" like a Florida-boy would consider them, but it's not still waters, either. The land is rather rocky, and the sand on the public "beach" we went to was much more coarse than I'm used to.

The thing I was amazed at was how much more I was drawn to the "low country" than I thought. I don't know if that's because I grew up on the beach or not, but I've found that while I'm not drawn to the concept of going "to the beach", I like the areas that are by the water. I find I'm more at peace for some reason. Maybe the concept of the vast ocean calms me or something.

Future

2007-05-16T08:42:00.000-04:00

One thing that I'm not, is patient. I've learned to force myself to do a lot of things, but in general the ability to "wait" has never really been in my nature. Waiting to see what the future holds, and not being able to interact with it is a very frustrating thing for me. It makes me become introspective and question what I'm doing with my life and if where I am is where I should be.

Am I doing the right things? Is the path for the future what I want to be doing? I have always had problems "seeing myself doing what I do now in 5-10 years", and I've been doing this same type of job since 1994. I started doing it as a help-desk position at UCF, and it's grown into a career. I just have never really seen where it's leading to, I just focus on the now and the things I need to do to take care of my current needs, seldom looking at my future goals.

At some point, things change. Time for hobbies and being introspectively visionary gives way to doing the dishes and taking out the trash. The problem really becomes times when you really notice it, and how you deal with it.

Right now... I'm not dealing with it very well.

Rain...

2007-05-07T11:13:00.000-04:00

It was one of those weekends, more planned than we really thought we could manage.

We had planned on going down to EPCOT to watch the Nelson Brothers do a set at the Flower and Garden festival, but we were tired. It had started to rain, and the kids were not in the best of moods. Somehow we got everything together, the rain had stopped, piled us and the kids into the car, and headed out. For those that haven't (or will never) experience Orlando traffic... it's an adventure. We get down to EPCOT and park, and praise God, we get a spot 4 rows from the front gate. Pretty amazing for 4pm on a Sunday at the parks, really.

We get inside, and the park is busy (like you would expect from Disney) but a fair number of people are heading out. We make it around to the World Showcase, and it starts to rain again. Again, for those not familiar with Florida showers, they are usually fast - lasting only 20-30 minutes on average - but they are wet. So we duck into the shops over in the Norway pavillion to stay somewhat dry, of course by now we are all soaking wet, but it's what is done. The kids gravitate to the "Kidcot" kids corner, where they can color a mask, and Christy and myself poke around a little bit in the shop. After 20 minutes or so I look outside, and the rain looks like it is letting up. The kids are all but finished with their masks, and I know it's going to be relatively crowded at the show.. so we head out. Now, it's still raining when we head out but we are wet already so I figured it wouldn't make that much of a difference. Christy decides to encourage the kids to jump in puddles and dance around in the rain. And watching them experience dancing around and playing in the rain brought back memories, and feelings. We both recognized that we were experiencing, through them, what it was like to be kids again. We both grew up around Disney, the parks were special experiences.

And we got to share those memories - not the ones of "Mission Space" or "Journey into Imagination" that make the Disney experience special, but rather the little things like running around in the end of rain, jumping in puddles while the tourists are spending $5 (or whatever crazy amount they are now) for plastic ponchos and attempting for all their life to stay dry. It cost us nothing to get up the energy to take them down to the parks, but what we got in return was priceless.

Memory Game

2007-05-04T10:08:00.000-04:00

I really hate it when I try to remember something that was so ingrained my skull at one point, and after some period of time it's lost to the "ether" around me somehow.

The latest of these "memory lapses" comes in the form of Mexican restaurant names. At one point there were two Mexican places literally beside each other around here, one was a local "chain" called Amigo's, and one was a national chain, which turned into Chevy's back about 10 years ago. Now for the life of me I cannot remember the name of the place.

I have 7 years of email from this job, every email that ever entered my yahoo or gmail account, and enough documents that I've written since college (including some printouts of Modula-2 programs that I did my freshman year on a VAX mainframe!), but little things like this will consume me until at some point I figure it out.

Doesn't help that wikipedia states that Chevy's is just a front name for a conglomorate now (used to be Pepsico, but they sold it off in the late 90's). I'll figure it out, it'll come to me at 2am and I'll blurt it out.. then my wife will be wondering what caused me to think of it then.

Edit: Many thanks to John, who's mad Google-fu skills figured out that it was Rio Bravo I was trying to remember!

School Boy Heart.

2007-05-03T09:57:00.000-04:00

Every so often, I get moments of Clarity.. things just seem to make sense. Been avoiding the "blog" scene .. well.. since it started, but I'm thinking it's time to start putting my thoughts into words on a screen, for my own edification.

I'm not intending this to be a "regular" thing that folks intend on getting an RSS feed of or anything, but rather more like a way for me to track myself.

If I had to use one word to describe myself, it would be "eclectic". I'm into an insanely large variety of music, love gaming in a variety of methods (PC, table-top RPG, minatures, Console), collecting Toys (one of these days I need to get up enough time to put all my Star Wars 3 3/4" figures up and take pictures again), and had a desire for music as well as art. I'm a Networking Professional (they call me a "Technology Development Engineer" at my job) by trade, and a Parrothead by heart.

This week, after nearly 20 years of avoiding it, I picked up a guitar and amp. Nothing fancy, nothing "expensive" (although it was painful for me to see the price tag, I mean it was in the triple digits!). I got a "Squire 51" guitar, and a Roland "Micro-Cube" amp to plug it into. That, a few books on how to play, and some determination is all that I have to go by right now. After 3 days of working on it, I'm still building up the callouses to have any length of play, but I'm determined to play some "six string music" eventually. For the first time in months I was drawn to listen to some of my Buffett collection, and picked "Far Side of the World" on my iPod while at work (I've loved "Tonight I just need my Guitar" since the first time I heard it), and the track list got to "Someday I will".. I think that's motivation enough for me right now.