It's Dai Time

Katie & Scott & Simon & Cecily.

Category: year26 (Page 89 of 92)

I posted an entry each day during my 26th year of life.

Day 13: money

February 24, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I took a corporate class last year about being an effective manager.  During it, we had an exercise where we had to choose our top five values.  As I whittled down my list to get my top value, I let loyalty and honesty drop by the wayside.  What I ended up with was financial security.  It’s not be something that everyone might even label a value, but it was on our list, and quite honestly it is the most important thing to me.

The recession and credit/housing crisis hasn’t affected us too much.  We think we managed to get our house at a relatively good price, but that’ll depend on how much further housing prices fall.  We manage to save a bit of money each month, even with our mortgage payments.  We’re doing OK.

And that really matters to me.  More so than having good friends (sorry good frineds of mine!), more so than making great games, and more so than teaching my cats to pee in the toilet – I need to know that we can go to a restaurant or a movie or the grocery store without having to check our balances first.

It’s odd, because when I was young, I was an idealist who thought that money was an unnecessary part of life.  I might even go as far as to say that I considered it an evil.  Who needed money in this world when there are such powerful forces as love and truth?

Somewhere after adolescence, I realized that maybe my parents weren’t wrong about everything.  I became a bit more practical and lowered my head from the clouds just a bit.  I’m still a bit like Christian in Moulin Rouge: above all things, I believe in love.  But, money’s pretty important, too.

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I don’t sit at home counting all my pennies every night before bed, but I do use Quicken (Deluxe, specifically) regularly and Mint.com as well to be able to track an overview of our funds on my phone.  It irks me a bit that Quicken online doesn’t hook up to my software copy of Quicken.

I would encourage everyone to at least keep broad track of their finances.  Spending 10-15 minutes every few days makes it easier to save money and see where the money you do spend is going.

I just got an email telling me to celebrate Mardi Gras with a sale at PetCo.  That is often the location that I first think of when contemplating where to celebrate Mardi Gras.

Day 12: everyone’s a gamer (part 2) + Oscar recap

February 23, 2009 / / 0 Comments

I’ll continue on the gaming front in a bit, but first a short Oscar recap.  How did I do in my pool?  Decent, but not great.  In a relatively upset-free year (except perhaps the coup of the night in Documentary Short), I made two mistakes: predicting an upset in Best Supporting Actress and underestimating the momentum of Milk.  And when you miss three biggies like Original Screenplay, Best Actor, and Best Supporting Actress, it’s hard to end up in the pool elite.

On another note, this year was probably one of the most entertaining Oscars I’ve watched in a long while.  Hugh Jackman was a terrific host and sang and danced multiple times.  The opening number was entertaining, Anne Hathaway was a sexy Nixon, and we got one of the best acceptance speeches of all time.  I also thought that the presentations of the acting awards was refreshing and nice, giving a bit of time to each of the nominees.  It finally felt like it was actually an honor to just be nominated.

OK, enough of that.  Continuing from yesterday’s post…

Second, new gamers have to go through a difficulty ramp that us veterans have all but forgotten: basic controls.  Give a 360 or PS3 controller to someone who’s never touched one before and it’s easy to see the fear in their eyes.  In addition to the dozen inputs on the front, there are four “trigger” controls that they probably wouldn’t have even found on their own!  Oh, and that central glowing thing is a button too!  And you can push down on the joysticks!

While it’s easy to scoff at local newsmen and politicians on TV when they say, “Oh, I haven’t played anything since Pac Man,” it’s hard to jump into today’s gaming.

If, that is, we define gaming as playing on a console.  A console that isn’t the Wii.  Because it ends up being not that hard when your son or boyfriend or nephew hands you a Wiimote and tells you that to play tennis, all you have to do is swing the controller like a tennis racket.  It’s not that hard when all you have to do is use that mouse and keyboard that you use all day at work to click on a few gems and move them around.

The Wii completely broke down one of the major barriers for entry into gaming today.  Suddenly, anyone could pick up a controller and start playing a game; you didn’t have to be familiar with the conventions that the game industry had been developing for the past 20 years.

Overnight, Nintendo essentially exposed the secret that everyone is a gamer.  This isn’t to say that the Wii is infallible; it has many disadvantages when compared to other consoles and the PC.  However, it is nothing short of truly revolutionary.  In a few short years, it has greatly transformed both the game industry and the game-buying population around the world.

And…scene.  Here are some more games for you to waste your time on:

Day 11: everyone’s a gamer (part 1)

February 22, 2009 / / 0 Comments

Chances are, you’ve played a video game.  If you’re one of my college friends, you almost certainly knew someone else with a console and played a random game at one time or another.  Or perhaps you have a DS on which you play something from time to time.  Or you enjoy the odd game of Peggle on your computer every now and again.  Or you occupy yourself in the spare minute while waiting for a bus by trying to beat you Snake high score on your phone.

Or, and here’s what I want to talk about today, someone sends you a link to a random flash game online and you spend a few minutes clicking on John McCain’s head or hitting the QWOP keys in frustration or something similar.

The industry has, of course, labeled this group as “casual gamers” – gamers who don’t necessary purchase gaming hardware and will play short bursts of things on their mobile devices or PCs.  Companies have also started to publish more casual games on the Wii as well, due to its continued popularity among people who haven’t been playing games for the past 10 years or so.

How did this happen?  How did a term not really even in use 5 years ago become a central tenet of most companies’ forward-looking plans?  The simple answer is that Nintendo took the small potatoes that casual gaming brought in on a collection of websites and turned it into big money with the Wii and DS.

The more complex answer is that everyone’s a gamer – they just might not know it yet.  All it takes to tip a person is two things: entertainment value and (as I mentioned in a previous post) difficulty.

A person who hasn’t played games before has to think that the entertainment value they get out of playing a game is going to be more valuable to them than the other things they could do with a similar amount of time.  This makes finding the right initial game for that person critical.  An action-oriented paintball-shooting sports fan with little patience for deep strategy is going to get easily bored with a deep RPG system.  Likewise, a strategic chess player who dislikes action movies is probably going to be disoriented and frustrated with an intense FPS.  This is where casual games help bridge the gap.  A new gamer is rarely going to plop down $300 before they can even play one game, so free or cheap online and downloadable games provide an easy way for them to find out what they like.  The production values are usually lower, sure, but the design and intent is all there.  It’s a great litmus test.

This is getting longer than anticipated, so I’ll continue tomorrow, along with some Oscar talk, probably.  In the meantime, enjoy this short list of online games I like:

  • The entire GROW series – cute artwork and fun with a touch of skill
  • I’m a sucker for Escape games, and 3wish adventures is good first escape game, with the Submachine series being a more challenging follow-up.
  • For those that remember You Don’t Know Jack, I need hardly explain.  For those that don’t, imagine getting to be in a new and well-written game show episode from the comfort of your computer, for free!

Day 10: too much movie makes the scott go awesome

February 21, 2009 / / 0 Comments

In an hour, Katie and I are headed to the movie theater to take part in the our yearly epic Oscar Movie Showcase.  It’ll be the third (consecutive) year that we’ve decided to do it, subjecting ourselves to the glory of watching five movies in one theatre on one day.  I think that Frost/Nixon closes out the evening for us around 11:50 PM.

That’s pretty much it for today, but I thought I’d answer some frequently asked questions that you have.

Are you crazy?  That’s so many movies to sit through!
I know!  Isn’t it great?  It’s a little crazy but not crazy enough.  The theatre’s usually pretty full and anyone can leave anytime they want.  It’s a great experience, though, and it’s a great way to get pumped for the Oscars tomorrow.

Does your butt get numb?
A bit, but movie theater seats are pretty comfy and you get short breaks in between each movie, as well as a longer dinner break between movies 3 and 4.  Besides, I practice by sitting for 8 hours each day at work.

So if you’ve seen some of them, you just rewatch them?
Yes, except I got lucky this year.  I haven’t seen any of them yet!  Katie’s seen Benjamin Button, but that’s it.  In fact, since we started going to the showcase, we’ve started to avoid watching potential Oscar Best Picture nominees through the year.  Between both of us, we’ve only ever watched one of the five films all three years.  For reference, it was Little Miss Sunshine and Juno the two previous years.  And I could watch Juno as many times as you play it front of me.

How do I win my Oscar pool?
Don’t be swayed by your emotional attachment to the films.  Don’t predict too many upsets, especially this year.  Don’t get last minute jitters and change all of your votes.  And, in most places, vote for Slumdog to take home the statuette.

Do you believe that the best film of the year always wins the Oscar?
No way.  There are so many independent films that get released yearly and there is so much campaigning and politicking around the Oscars themselves that it’d be impossible to say that they always award the actual “Best Picture.”  Heck, sometimes the “real” Best Picture may not even be nominated.  The academy does an admirable job, however, of highlighting some pretty good movies usually, even if their tastes from year to year seem to stay similar.

Oh, do you get any perks at this showcase thing?
Heck yeah!  Free popcorn, all day.  And a collectible lanyard thing!  There’s also trivia in the theater in between movies where you can win posters and stuff, but it’s pretty random and haphazard who gets called on to answer.

All right, I’m off for 13+ hours of quality cinema and will attempt to not let me personal feelings cloud my Oscar pool picks, which are already pretty well solidified.

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