Life, · Family, · and · Games

The guys I game with (D&D normally) all decided to move our World of Warcraft games to one of the new servers. I even convinced a friend to play that I've been trying to get to play pretty much since the game came out. We move to Undermine, a new server since 8/21/06. However, now when you go to logon, you have to wait in the queue. This waiting is often up to 10 minutes. If you go out to the realm selection, the server is still listed as "recommended." Come on, Blizzard, don't recommend a server if it's full! In game, I see more characters around than I think I have ever seen and this is at all times of the day.

Why is this? I'm guessing that since the game price dropped to $19.95, there are quite a few that have finally dared to try the game, either from curiosity or from forceful friends. I've also heard that there are many more trial accounts ongoing than in the past. Of course, if you are trying a game that you haven't played, wouldn't you go to the servers that are "recommended" when you log on.

Now I suppose that 10 minutes is not that big of deal, except that many times when I'm playing, I've only got 20-30 minutes to play. When one-half to one-third of your game time is dedicated to logging-in, well, you get the point. That's enough rant for now.

Wow, got distracted for a while. I suppose that it's pretty easy to do. Work has been okay, seems to be a lot of reactive things. Well, I suppose that seems to be the norm. It seems that work is all out, pedal to the metal or calm seas, nothing at all (or nothing I want to work on). Therefore, I want to talk about an idea, objectives and tasks. Now most of this is based on the army and my experiences with it as I think my company pretty much doesn't do project management well.

When you give someone an objective, a project for example. The objective, or scope of the project needs to be well-defined. In addition to the usually, time-cost-objectives, tell me what I am doing the project for. What is the end state? What are we trying to prove, or disprove? Okay, so now, we have an objective and we break it into tasks. With each task you need a purpose. Got that, task and purpose.

Too frequently, I get a so-called project with little to no instructions. So I then ask questions about the purpose or end-state and the answer is normally a blank stare or little to no additional information. I then proceed to churn along, trying to guess what I'm supposed to be accomplishing, only to find out that when it's complete, it was not done how it was supposed to be. Of course, I don't know what it was supposed to be like, so...

In the military, when you are given a mission, it includes the who, what, where, when, and why. You get to determine the how. Additionally, you are normally given the commander's guidance and an end state. If there is a question, you ask it, and then you readjust. In the civilian world, it seems rare that enough information is ever received to do something right the first time.

I've been listening to a podcast, Inside the Magic. Obviously, it's about Disney. They talk about the park (WDW), movies, food, sights and sounds. It sure brings back memories. My family and I are going to WDW this fall for a week. I just can't wait. Yes, I'm a kid at heart (my wife tells me this all the time). We'll be staying in Old Key West that is a part of the Disney Vacation Club (DVC). DVC is fantastic. It's Disney's equivalent of time share on a more flexible basis My first trip to WDW was in 1995. Since then, I've gone five more times (+/-). As an engineer, the way that WDW is constructed is amazing. A few year's back, I went to a convention for the National Society of Professional Engineers (NSPE), I got to take the behind the scenes tour. Under the Magic Kingdom is fantastic. I wouldn't mind going back to see that again.

Most of last weekend was spent cleaning the house. My wife and I a few weeks ago had pretty much given in to the fact that with two small children, the house would never be clean. That we would be stuck in a cluttered mess until they were off to college was a possible solution. That is not the case now as it is clean. My youngest, aged 3, even commented last night that "the house sure is clean" as I'm following behind her picking up her stuff. Now working 16+ hours picking up and cleaning is not one of the things I normally would call fun, but it sure feels good to have it that way. Of course, it will probably only last a week. :)

An interesting note is that I've been trying to get my wife to try World of Warcraft. I think that she would enjoy it and it would be something that we could do together. She finally said that once the house is all clean and picked up, then she would try. This cleaning is beyond that of last weekend, it involves all the boxes filled with stuff piled up in parts of the house and garage. It may be a long time before she tries WoW.

We live in a house, built in 1957. We purchased the house in 1993, a year after we got married. In about 2000, we started planning a remodel. Not just new paint and roof but major renovation. We used an architect to make sure all the details were correct. In 2004, we did a big portion of the remodel, what we call Phase I. This involved replacing the brick, to include using Tyvek and wall insulation that was not there before. We added a section on the front of the house, bringing the front out and adding an entryway focusing an observer to look at it vs. the garage that stuck out. The house was a "typical" ranch house of the period. Additionally, we enclosed the existing garage and built a new 3 car garage in the back yard with an upstairs to be used in the future as a game room and storage. For the majority of the work, we used a general contractor (GC) that lived in our neighborhood. We figured that he would love to do the work as we live in the same neighborhood. Everything started well until the wrong color of roof was installed. Needless to say, the contract said match the garage roof, so we got another new roof. We then started noticing small things that should have been corrected by the GC's project manager. Over cuts on outlet receptacles, painting problems, a beautiful new double front door that didn't close properly. I suppose all of this point is just buyer beware. When you remodel, you pay twice for the same thing. We paid for the house once, then we rip out things and rebuild them. If anyone would like some remodel best practices, let me know. Since I went to Iraq for 18 months, a lot of momentum for remodeling is lost but there is still so much work to do, even in the Phase I stuff. There is still a bunch of painting trim, installing HVAC vents, and tons of touch up. Ah, the joys of home ownership. Maybe we have just moved. I love my house and my neighborhood, but sometimes. Enough rambling, I don't even remember the point of what I meant to say here.

Ever been involved in a large corporate restructure and wished that you were affected? My company, a Fortune 500 company just did a major restructuring of the business unit that I'm in. Now I've been with the company over 20 years and, generally, life has been good. However, since my return from Iraq, I've felt that I need some change, something different, and that my skills have been underutilized. Today, the results were announced and basically for me, there was no change. As much as I'm glad there wasn't, I still kind of wish that there was. Ever felt like this? I suppose that time will tell with work. At least, I've got a job and mostly it's a great job. If only it was a bit better.

I saw most of this show last night, while getting the girls bathed and ready for bed. Very entertaining show and I usually don't recommend TV, especially reality shows.

One of the tests for the contestants was that they had to start out in their civilian clothes. Then, they were alerted by Stan Lee; had to find a place to change clothes without being seen, then run through a arch to complete the test. The event took place in some kind of office park environment. The twist was that there was a little girl crying for her mom saying that she was lost. Of course, the superhero should stop and help the girl which 3 or 4 (of 11) did. However, most just ran on by her "focused on the mission."

The best hero I see so far is a guy called "Major Victory" who wears red tights with black shorts, with the letter V on his chest. His civilian job is a DJ but had previously worked as an exotic dancer. What's so good (and entertaining) about this guy is that when he runs, he stops, moves his head to look both ways, hesitates, gestures, very much like characters do in comics. I've never recommended a reality show before but this one gets two thumbs up.

The winner of the show gets a comic book by Stan Lee (the show judge) and SCI-FI channel will make a movie about the character.

Okay, so my company is implementing a new email policy. All email >180 days old will be deleted. All local and email server archive files will be deleted. The ability to create archive files will be eliminated. Certainly, this is pretty drastic. The cost of storage is cheap, especially the email archives on my local hard drive. An excerpt of the policy is:

"We recognize that these changes will have an impact on those employees who are utilizing archiving features and retaining extensive email archives, however, given the proliferation of electronic records at [company], the retention of electronic documents creates a number of issues and the company is convinced that implementation of this policy will benefit the company and its employees in the future. These email retention policy settings will move [company] closer to best practices in email retention, reduce the time and costs associated with litigation discovery and will help manage the company’s storage costs associated with email. "

It just seems a bit drastic. The server storage size has already been reduced to 100mb. Won't this change in policy just make everyone forward their email to another email address when they want to save it?

In Iraq, I picked up quite a few movies and television series from the local national markets. These are markets located at or near coalition bases, primarily for sales to U.S. and coalition military personnel and contractors. They are often called Hadji marts. Interesting note, while we may think that Hadji may be derogatory, it is actually a compliment to most moslems. Reference to Hadji, means that you have undertaken the Hadj pilgrimage.

So I brought back multiple TV series for a fraction of the cost here. Needless to say, for some reason, all the subtitles are in english and chinese. Coincidence, I think not.

My wife and I have been watching the series The Wire, HBO, about an episode a week. We're still in Season One but it's a pretty good show.

I normally don't watch any televsion at all, with the few noted exceptions, but tonight I might, or at least am thinking about it. The TV comes on for the girls to watch Disney or the Cartoon Network and for wife for HGTV. On the weekends we may rent a movie to watch, but normally it sits idle. But tonight is:

Who Wants to be a Superhero, SCI FI channel reality show premiere tonight at 8pm. I may actually turn on the TV.

http://www.scifi.com/superhero

I'm actually more interested in The Amazing Screw On Head at 930pm. Animated comic book during Civil War times. The online pilot is pretty good.

http://www.scifi.com/amazingscrewonhead

I listen to a few podcasts these days. I have an old 3G 15gb iPod that I bought when I was mobilized for Operation Iraqi Freedom in July 2004. I just replaced the battery a couple of days ago. It just couldn’t quite keep a charge for more than 2 or 3 days.

My podcasts range from computer games, to technology, to some humor, to NPR and Wall Street Journal headline news. I started listening to podcasts while in Iraq. It gave me variety (as compared to just music). Many podcasts are great and recorded well but my one big irritant is the way that the volume varies so much requiring me to change the volume up and down throughout the cast. There has to be an easy solution to this. I’ve seen programs for recording at constant levels. Nothing like not being able to hear something, then being blasted out.

I was listening this morning to one (mmorpg.com podcast) discussing advertising in MMOs (and games in general). They were talking about the deal by Toyota to include advertising for their new car (don’t remember the name) in Anarchy Online (AO). If the product placement is appropriate, then go for it. This would be where a character is getting a drink and it happens to be a Pepsi or Coke. However, advertising for the sake of advertising is worthless. I don't think that the Toyota advertising would be appropriate as AO is set in the year 34,000 (+/-) and the "cars" in AO are in essence spaceships. Now if during some instance in WoW, I pick up Nike Boots of the Bear (that have a swoosh on it), then there's another problem. Now if I'm playing Ghost Recon and there are ads with current products, then I'm okay with that.

Howdy, I’m 43; I’ve been married over 14 years and have 2 children, aged 8 and 3, and I still love games. Ever since I was a small child I’ve loved and played games.

I remember playing card games like Russian Bank, Canasta, and Liverpool Rummy with parents and friends. Scrabble and Monopoly were also pretty big. In, I’m guessing 8th grade (junior high), I was introduced to Tactics II by Avalon Hill. My first step into wargames. I quickly moved to purchase D-Day, also by Avalon Hill. I played it with friends, and my dad. When I beat my dad, that’s when he quit playing with me. This game led to others, in fact I still have quite a few in boxes in my garage attic. Diplomacy, Tobruk, Squad Leader, and one of my favorites Starfall; just to name a few.

In 9th grade, a friend introduced me to Dungeons and Dragons, a role-playing game (RPG). I quickly purchased a set of the D&D White Books (that I still own, though a bit beat up). Back in 1976, this was quite an amazing thing, this RPG game. The first of its kind, the first of many. I’ve now played DnD on and off for over 30 years. My wife and I have an verbal agreement that, once per month, I get to go play games, typically on a Sunday. So for 6 hours a month, I get my gaming fix.

Not to say that the only games I play are RPGs now. I’ve been playing video and computer games since as long as I can remember also. We had an original Pong TV video game that a cousin gave us. You remember the one that required you to add the “English” on it otherwise it would get stuck and never change course. Soon thereafter, I remember the family getting an Atari 2600. My favorite games were Pitfall and the time that I turned over Missile Command. Arcade video games were coming into the scene with Space Invaders. Soon followed by my all time arcade favorite, Robotron, the only official arcade game, I rolled over. Lots of hours spent at the Malibu Grand Prix in southwest Houston dropping quarters in arcade and pinball machines.

The same cousin that gave us the Pong had a Commodore Pet computer with a cassette tape drive. Man, I was in heaven. Typing in code from Byte magazine, what a blast. Then having to reload the tape several times because the machine didn’t read it correctly. In college, my roommate showed up with an Osborne CPM computer. With the package, he brought Zork. There were many long hours, he and I would sit there mapping, trying to get to the next area (without getting eaten by the grue, of course). In later years I played many more of the Infocom, text adventures, great fun back them.

Nowadays, I still play computer games. I also have an Xbox with a frequency of use that varies according to what time of year. My time is limited with a family but usually is 2-3 times per week after 9pm and Friday and Saturday nights from 9pm to 12am (+/-). Currently, I’m playing World of Warcraft (WoW) and have been playing on and off since it was released. There was a small break in which I was playing Dungeons and Dragons Online with my gaming buddies but the inability to get together and lack of solo content killed this. Of an interesting note is that I played WoW in Iraq during my National Guard deployment in 2005. I operated a satellite internet system as a co-op for 65 soldiers in my unit. Try playing an MMO with a lag of 3-5, up to 10 seconds; lots of lag death. In addition to WoW, I’ve played other MMOs in the past, Ultima Online and EverQuest for short periods, Star Wars Galaxies and Anarchy Online each for greater than a year.

In addition to an MMO (can only afford or have time for one at a time), I play other computer games. I enjoy RPGs, FPSs, strategy, and some action games. The first two games I played when I got back from Iraq were Halo 2 (Xbox) and Half Life 2 (would not run on my laptop). I tried Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV) but lost interest for some unknown reason. I am contemplating purchasing an Xbox 360 but haven’t yet made the plunge.