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Peggy Noonan writes about the Massachusetts Senate election in which a Republican won in what many viewed as a referendum on the Healthcare Reform that is currently being debated in congress. Both sides of the aisle are pointing to why this happened and I’ve yet to see someone that sums it up as well as Peggy does:
Speaking broadly: In the 2006 and 2008 elections, and at some point during the past decade, the ancestral war between Democrats and the Republicans began to take on a new look. If you were a normal human sitting at home having a beer and watching national politics peripherally, as normal people do until they focus on an election, chances are pretty good you came to see the two major parties not as the Dems versus the Reps, or the blue versus the red, but as the Nuts versus the Creeps. The Nuts were for high spending and taxing and the expansion of government no matter what. The Creeps were hypocrites who talked one thing and did another, who went along on the spending spree while lecturing on fiscal solvency.
In 2008, the voters went for Mr. Obama thinking he was not a Nut but a cool and sober moderate of the center-left sort. In 2009 and 2010, they looked at his general governing attitudes as reflected in his preoccupations—health care, cap and trade—and their hidden, potential and obvious costs, and thought, “Uh-oh, he’s a Nut!”
Which meant they were left with the Creeps.
But the Republican candidates in Virginia and New Jersey, and now Scott Brown in Massachusetts, did something amazing. They played the part of the Creep very badly! They put themselves forward as serious about spending, as independent, not narrowly partisan. Mr. Brown rarely mentioned he was a Republican, and didn’t even mention the party in his victory speech. Importantly, their concerns were on the same page as the voters’. They focused on the relationship between spending and taxing, worried about debt and deficits, were moderate in their approach to social issues. They didn’t have wedge issues, they had issues.
The million dollar question now is whether or not these new office holders will do what they say and follow through on their promises. Based on past behavior by Republicans, I’m betting on more Creepy behavior.
After shipping my MAME controller back to the manufacturer I was presented with a straight up replacement of the existing Plexiglas top and essentially trying it again as is. I was also given the option of anchoring the Plexiglas in place with several tiny black screws:
After mulling it over for a day I decided to go ahead with the screws. This way I know for sure that the issue is not going to occur again. My current control panel on the cabinet has these black screws on the surface and it doesn’t take away from the looks of the panel at all.
I’m hoping that I can get the panel back by the end of next week. I’m itching to tear out the old panel and begin mating up the new one to the cabinet.
This month marks the seven year anniversary of my web log. I started it using a virtual DNS service and ran it off my home PC. It was slow and any time the service burped my ‘massive’ online presence would vanish until I returned home to reset it. Eventually I bit the bullet and bought some hosted space, used blogger for a bit, then Moveabletype and now I’m happily using WordPress. I initially set this up to learn about the plumbing behind the internet and to prove to myself that I could in fact set up a website in the days when pretty much everything you did on the web was set by hand, no plug and play like today. My posting frequency was rather high when I first began, averaging seventeen posts a month in 2003, reflective of the fact that I was playing with a new toy I guess. You can then see when my Warcraft addiction kicked in, the majority of my energy going into the game and sucking any and all creative thoughts I had away into a vacuum. My average posts of 15 per month in 2004, 4 per month in 2005, 3 per month in 2006, Under 3 per month in 2007, under 2 per month in 2008 and 2009 started off the same until October of ’09 when I quit and my thoughts of other things resurfaced.
In all the time I’ve posted here the sole reason has been to take ideas and thoughts that have no other home and give them that. During that time I’ve managed to reconnect with several people from various stages of my life, early childhood, young adult, college and early jobs. One of the benefits of a rather uncommon last name is that when people Google it you pop up. Many of them were nothing more than a ‘Hey! How have you been?’ but each was nice because for the most part those people had drifted out of my day to day memories despite playing a prominent part in my life at one time. Just as they surfaced they drifted away yet again.
Out of curiosity and the insistence of a fellow WoW player and friend who said something along the lines of ‘Sign up so I can see your old girlfriends’, I signed up for Facebook in the middle of last year. It’s taken me a while to formulate my thoughts on the social networking (facebook, myspace, plurk, twitter, whatever) phenomenon matter but here they are:
For someone that considers himself above average with the whole PC/tech side of things I have to say that the layout and navigation of these sites are absolutely horrible with Facebook taking the prize for the worst interface of all. I can only think that the reason they make it so obtuse is to increase the number of page views they are getting and thereby increase the perceived value of their property.
More than anything else, the creators of Facebook have managed to find a new clientele for gaming – middle aged women. The sheer volume of Farmville & Mafia Wars announcements represents a collective waste of time that may indeed put the lost productive hours spent on WoW to shame. Getting these people hooked on their free games is only the first step in monetizing their business model I’m sure. Women are a notoriously hard market to crack for the gaming industry and it looks like Facebook found the nutcracker.
It is very easy to spend a good hour jumping from one friend to the next, piggy backing off of their friend lists to see who you may or may not have missed seeing online. It is also very easy to see that some people have managed to maintain the very same friendships they had when I knew them, almost to the point where you wonder if they have changed one bit since you saw them last. Most of the people you see are mostly fatter, sometimes balder versions of the people you remember from your past. Out of all the profiles I’ve seen just one was an ‘I can’t believe it’ jaw dropper, even at this point I’m thinking the person either had radical plastic surgery or they were kidnapped by some foreign government and replaced with a poor body double.
The field has changed but the game is the same. The same people that are pros at manipulating others show their abilities by posting short, vague statements about their lives to increase their own self-importance thereby soliciting the expected ‘omg – is everything ok?’ responses from a half dozen friends followed by the two or three equally cryptic comments by people that are clearly ‘in the loop’. Virtually published semi-secret hidden drama is just as good as the real thing right?
Ancillary sites have popped up in response to what can only be described as real life stupidity saved for eternity. If you have a spare hour or two go to Facebookfails.com to laugh and further reduce your faith in the future of humanity.
For people that find Facebook to be too slow or too big and clunky to manage Twitter and Plurk come to the rescue. Post every single silly thought in your head, hell, tell everyone when your ass itches! The world wants needs to know all about it.
The final impact that these new social networking sites will have is yet to be seen. Time Magazine and many others are sounding the death knell for the high school reunion as well as other time tested meet ups. Now that I’ve had the chance to see how a good 70% of my high school class turned out I don’t need to see them face to face right?
This Christmas was like many others in our house – very much a video game year yet again. There were other gifts to be had for sure but the boys are gamers like me so I will focus on them. Some of the more notable additions to the gaming stable were:
Created as part of a joint venture between Electronic Arts and Steven Spielberg, Boom Blox is a fun intuitive game that is easy for people to learn to play. This game was far and away the favorite of the boys for at least the first 72 hours post Christmas. We could hear them laughing among themselves as they progressed through the game.
Game play is set within a virtual world that loosely follows the rules of Jenga. Towers of blocks are presented to the players with the goal sometimes being to knock them down quickly or to slowly remove pieces without letting others fall. The concept is very simple yet fun. The sequel is sure to join our game library.
The purchase of this one was pretty much required. The only truly new feature to this game is the ability for four players to play this side scrolling game at the same time. I played with the boys for 20 minutes or so and while it was fun I felt like I’d played this game so many times before that it wasn’t worth devoting the time to play this one too. I know the boys will feel differently and they did play it for a good bit over the weekend getting maybe 4 or 5 worlds deep last night alone.
A combination RPG (role playing game) / RTS (real time strategy) created from the ground up for the Wii from heavy hitters in the gaming industry, Little King’s Story has received great reviews as a nice intro to this gaming genre for players that are new to the game. Son #1 played it for a very short time over the weekend and while the initial pacing was a bit slow I expect it to pick up and suck him in.
Scribblenauts is an innovative DS puzzle solving game that allows the player to take their ideas and create solutions with the stylus. Can’t reach something in a tree? Scribble a ladder and use it to climb up and grab it. Son #2 did spend some time playing it but I didn’t get to see much of it happening myself.
Mario & Luigi Bowser’s Inside Story:
Son #2 loves the Mario & Luigi series and the Nintendo RPG series in particular. He tore into this one and seems to enjoy it quite a bit. I’m sure it will get played over and over by each of the boys and I will never get to try it.
Professor Layton and the Curious Village:
A puzzle game bought to stretch the thinking process of our boys, this game was highly rated in reviews with many people saying that the brain teasers are fun to figure out. I’m not sure this one made it out of the box yet.
Son #4 made out really well with many new additions to his Thomas the Tank Engine train collection. We had the family over on Friday night and everyone seemed to have a nice time.
All in all a nice Christmas for the boys, which makes me very happy.
Newton’s First Law of Motion states that a body at rest will remain at rest unless an outside force acts on it, and a body in motion at a constant velocity will remain in motion in a straight line unless acted upon by an outside force. For the better part of the past five years I’ve felt like that body at rest. I’ve had goals that have sat on the shelf waiting for ‘the time’ to attend to them. Instead of working on bettering myself and attaining those goals I devoted the better part of five years to a task with no true payback and no finish line. That ended for me just as I approached my 40th birthday. Deep inside my psyche I knew it was now time to get serious about my goals and begin working on achieving them.
I’m glad that I’ve thrown the monkey off my back and I’ve worked hard to restore my connections with my family and friends that I’ve neglected. Sadly, I fear that some of those connections have now changed in ways that I can’t change back. I can only look forward at this point and hope that as time goes by what seems impossible will slowly but surely become possible. The inertia that held me trapped was quite large and honestly could only be escaped by me because it was created by me. Once I began to realize that the things I truly wanted, the things I considered most important to me were being neglected by my actions they became a bigger pull to me than the escape that my ‘addiction’ was. I slowly prepared my exit strategy and executed it nearly flawlessly, quitting a few months sooner than I anticipated.
Looking back, I’m not sure how I managed to fit it into my life. The sheer volume of time required to be a part of a ‘relatively’ bleeding edge group like I was cut into nearly every other aspect of my life. I managed to move the majority of the time I devoted to it into late night hours which only cut into my sleep in an attempt to spare my other obligations. Now that I’ve quit and get roughly six or seven hours of sleep a night instead of the two or three I was getting I find myself much more engaged in work and at home. I don’t miss the game itself – not one bit. Making this change was a huge win for me and I’m glad I made it.
Since quitting I’ve recommitted myself to several short and long term goals. First, I’m determined to improve my overall health. Having a desk job that I spend a minimum of 50 hours a week at sitting on my backside coupled with then spending another 18-20 a week sitting while playing contributed to me being horribly out of shape and overweight. Since quitting in early October I’ve made significant strides in correcting this problem. If my progress continues at the current pace I will be at my goal by May of next year. The normal sleep pattern coupled with my healthier habits has helped a great deal with improving my overall mood.
The extra time and energy is also allowing me to complete old goals as well as realize some new ones, but more on that later. Despite the doom and gloom surrounding our economy and the overall future of our world I’m looking forward to next year and those beyond it. I feel like I’m moving again and I don’t plan on letting myself rest or get pulled off course again.
One of our family traditions is to head out to a local tree farm to hand pick and cut down our tree. Wata Farm is the proto-typical Christmas Tree Farm. Parking is provided in a grass field that fills up quickly. They do have several people helping to guide people to parking spots. Getting in and out of the farm itself can be difficult because the driveway is one lane wide. People wanting to leave will sometimes get stuck waiting for a long line of people coming in to clear the way out and vice versa. The driveway really could use a widening.
Once you get into your spot it is only a short distance to the carts they provide to haul your tree in from the field. Without fail several of my boys tussle over who will help me pull the cart up the hill to the trees. Christmas music can be heard within earshot of the checkout area which is a nice touch. The trees are planted in orderly rows with different types labeled at the end of the row. We walked all the way to the top of the hill this year to try a new type of tree that is supposed to give better support to heavier ornaments.
It didn’t take us more than 10 minutes to locate a tree that met our specifications. Here’s the gang posing with our tree pre-cut:
Our family tradition, which has only been interupted a few times in the past 10 years or so is to drop off the tree at home then head to Friendly’s for lunch or dinner followed up by ice cream. We don’t eat out much so this is a big treat for the boys. This year due to a scheduled nap for son #4 as soon as we got home from the farm we cut the bottom two inches off the tree and place it in the stand filled with water. This was much easier to accomplish without son #4 helping out.
Once everyone is in bed I string the lights on the tree by myself. The next day, again during son #4′s nap the older boys help decorate the tree:
Son #4 has been pretty good so far with the tree, only ripping off a stray ornament here and there. Here he shows his grip for grabbing ornaments.
Now all we need to do is wait for the big guy to arrive.
Saturday marked the arrival of the final piece of my MAME puzzle, the custom control panel I ordered from North Coast Custom Arcades arrived. Here it is still in the box:
It was packed well with a series of foam bridges sitting across the top of the panel. I was a bit surprised to see not one but 3 USB connectors hanging out of the back of the panel as I only have one open USB port on the PC running my cabinet. I’m going to have to play around with my options there. The fit and finish of the panel was very nice. I don’t think I could approach this level of craftsmanship if I had built it myself. The only issue I see is that the Plexiglas top I paid for as an extra is not completely flush in two spots. It pops up above the t-molding in two places creating a possible point where a player could catch it with a sleeve and pull it up higher. I plan to contact the seller today and ask for some advice in correcting the issue.
Here is the panel sitting in front of the cabinet before installation. It is a good bit wider and shallower than the original. This will require some building up of the base of the cabinet to get a solid fit. I plan to remove the original CP then take lots of measurements. I want the new panel to fit in seamlessly but I also want to make it so I can remove it at any time if the need should arise.
To the right of the panel you can see a USB hub. First I tried to connect it to the PC without power to the hub. The PC quickly told me that the hub didn’t have enough juice to supply all of the devices. I connected power and all 3 devices were recognized and installed. I was under the impression that all of the joysticks and buttons would be recognized by MAME once the PC found it. This was not the case as I’ve had to go into the settings for each game I want to play and manually edit them to the correct buttons. Once they are set they work great but the thought of having to manually do this for the hundred or so games I want to play is daunting. I’m hoping that I can find a configuration file somewhere that I can drop in the MAME directory and it will do the rest.
I’m hoping to have it installed over the Christmas / New Years break. I’ll post pictures of the installation when it happens.
Two months ago I purchased an Xbox 360 to fill the gaming gap that was left from my quitting World of Warcraft. One of the added bonuses for me was the ability of the Xbox to directly interface with Netflix, allowing us to download and watch both standard and high definition movies via web streaming. After two months I have found the service to be both great and frustrating at the same time.
First the good stuff; the system is fast, select a movie and it begins playing in approximately 30 seconds, briefly pausing to calculate your video quality based off of your net connection. We run an older speed DSL at home and despite that we get the highest video settings unless both of the upstairs PCs are also being used. The controller functions as a decent remote, you can pause and shuttle throughout the show just like you would any DVR program or other video. There is an option to add a show to your ‘instant queue’ allowing you to bypass the loading process. There are various outputs you can select from wide screen, grey bars, etc. I haven’t noticed if they provide subtitles or not.
The frustration mainly comes from a few simple options that most people would assume to be nearly mandatory. The biggest missing feature is a search function. There is simply no way to quickly sort the videos that are available and select the one you want. Instead the interface gives you a long line of virtual video ‘boxes’ just like you would see at the now defunct video store. This forces the user to ‘scroll’ through hundreds of choices before settling on something. Even stranger, every time we enter the Netflix menu system both the categories and the movie choices themselves change. Simply starting the Netflix up, exiting it and re-entering it can sometimes change the choices. On a few occasions I’ve seen categories that seem to be a summary of choices we might like based on what we’ve watched in the past. Other times they aren’t available. Video titles appear for one night only to be missing the next.
This service has a lot of potential and I have to say that when we do finally settle on a movie we do enjoy it and haven’t had any issues with the actual watching of the movie. The process of getting to that point is very unfinished to say the least. Here’s to hoping they will release an updated interface at some point in the future.
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