Hoshnasi

“It was the pressure I felt that I remember most. Like sinking a leg into a cold rushing stream during a winter melt. It was numbing, painful and made me feel swollen all over.” Jonathan paused as though pulling words out of his mind and chewing on them.

“Don’t get me wrong I was scared as hell but I wasn’t cold. I just said that to explain the way you feel when your fingers and toes are swollen and your skin feels as though it will burst.”

“Out of all the carnage you witnessed its the feeling you got in your toes and fingers that you remember most? Wasen’t the piles and piles of bodies more alarming and searing to you memory?

“Dective please, you have to understand the nature of this nest. Its not like I fell through a crack and was shocked by the viceral sights. This desecrated space stretched for miles underground. The voracity of this infection was like nothing I had seen. In a fort night, Ostown was almost sunk into the decrepit sore festering below. It was so large and pervasive it had its own atmosphere, that to someone whom is familiar with such phenomena struck me.”

“But what of the towns folk? Some twenty strong men fell within this stretch of time to the infection.”

“They were ill-prepared the lot of them. The lack of information this far out of London is shocking to me. Then again, I am not convinced the towns people were not involved…”

“Mr. Bash you have no proof for such claims!”

“To your eyes of illegal items then true there is no proof. However, it is obvious that there were many symbols of the occult. Certain item in particular were recovered that outlined the perimeter of the underground from the very houses and crawl spaces of the village.”

**Thats all I got, I’m sitting in a board meeting and got bored.  Posted this on my TMobile G1, guess I’m getting back to bloging.

In 1996 I received a game I didn’t like to play in the dark.  Its of course Resident Evil.  Telling you nothing you don’t already know, it was a pretty ground breaking survival horror game. In 98′ Resident Evil 2 was released and very important to my point the DualShock controller with two analog sticks was released in 99′.  Which in turn caused a re-release of RE2, which had rumble and dual stick support.

Up until now, RE1 and RE2 were the only games I could stand to play. I enjoyed the fixed camera and stuck in wet cement movement feel.  The game was very intense for those two reasons alone.  It really worked at that time.  I didn’t play other installments in the series except for RE4, which I just couldn’t play.  The controls didn’t work with the very FPS-centric gamer I had become.

The level of enemies on the screen and what I fell to be shackling aiming control frustrated more than made me tense.  Correct me if I’m wrong, but before RE4, all except RE installments except for parts in Code Veronica the camera was set at fixed points on a section of the map, or level.  As the player moved the cameras perspective would change.  Aside from the increased graphics on different systems and depth of story RE4 was the first serious departure from the standard “Survival Horror” and exploration in the RE series.   That’s not a bad thing, but its a leap in the evolutionary path, be it good or bad.

That brings me to the point.  Appreciating what RE is about and what makes it special I really think its time to open the control scheme a bit more than RE5 did.  I really like RE5, the new (Gears-esque) control scheme is a serious upgrade to that of RE4 and actually gives me something I feel is highly approachable to the gamer I am.  With that said, I don’t think its going to pull in all those Halo and Call of Duty players.  I’ll go a step further and say, when speaking on the controls alone, they feel more suited for the PS3 crowd than that of the 360, at least when considering the types of games available.

There has been a heated debate on both side of this control argument since RE5 was announced and that press release video commenting that “Move and Shoot” would be in RE5 then later recanted DID NOT HELP.

Lets try and put this in the simplest of terms.  If there were options in the game for both “stop to aim and shoot” or “run and gun”, which do you think players would use?  It would seem obvious that the run and gun option would make up the majority.  I can hear it now,  “But that’s not Resident EEEEEVIL!”  Well neither was over the shoulder camera until the RE4!  The game has evolved already.  Much of its classic ambiance building - stuck camera, slowed movement and single d-pad control (tank control) are GONE.  Why has “stop to aim” become the last peak the purists have decided to make their stand on?

With my dirty laundry on the neighbors coffee table I have to say, I like RE5;  Even with what I feel are in some cases frustrating controls.  As many of the control purists have said “Try the demo first if you think the controlls are an issue“…  I agree 100% with this, if you are a CoD or Gears player activate the last controller option.  The one with left stick strafe (mostly) and right stick camera.  Then at least the game feels a bit more fluid.

Realign you’re thought process on devices.

I was following Gizmodo this morning on the kindle 2 launch.  They now have a “Hands on” up so check it out.
The kindle is an interesting device.  Its pretty polarizing actually.  For as many people you hear that are interested in it, there are twice as many or more that hate it -an opinion that may or  may not be founded on actually ever looking at eInk in person.

It does have a market though.  Back in August sales numbers were posted, TechCrunch ran an article on it.  So we have a device that to many seems pointless and over-priced yet is selling well and continuing to get people to fill it with books.  Whats going on here?  Do we have a bunch of dopes with cash to burn or are the nay-sayers missing something.  While I’m sure there were plenty with cash to burn, I’m going to say its that people don’t see the vision of these types of products.

People have likened the kindle to the original iPod.  A device that at its inception really just held and played a ton of audio.  Audiophiles scoffed at the iPod for its mp3 quality (remeber that?) and others chastized its very high price, I’m not possitive but it was upwards of $350.00-$400.00.  Is this a sound comparison to the kindle?  Sure, at its very essense the kindle is a device that simulates paper, carries a ton of books and is expensive.

Gadget debates form around the integration into everyday life.  There seems to be a trend though.  Get as many functions into as few devices as possible.  For many this could be an iPhone.  But for people nuts about photography,  The iPhone is not of quality of device they require and  they end of up carrying maybe a different phone (with better camera) or a sepperate camera.  For gamers and dependending on the games they play the iPhone could be fine.  However on the majority.  Most will want a defined platform well integrated for game play.  So a Nintendo DS or Sony PSP gets carried around.  For workers on the go, now we’re talking laptops and that in itself is a whole other arguement that brings in weight, size, heat and the all important money to power ratio as things get smaller.

Whats this have to do with the kindle?  Well for readers, the iPhone is not a good solution.  It is a solution, given that other factors are important, but the tiny screen and battery life is NOT helping an serious reader.  The kindle 2, while obviously a second device to lug around has a MASSIVE battery life, two weeks on a charge and what I think is as close to paper as we can get in terms of a screen.

The question is “Am I as a reader better served with the kindle and the experience it provides then that of a iPhone, laptop or PDA?”  The reasons are yours of course, but it is important to consider these things as a whole.

I personally think the kindle and kindle 2 are innovative products that for people who have a passion for reading is an easy buy.  For those readers who also get the newspaper, are avid blog readers and us email it moves closer to a no brainier.  I myself fall into the “wants to be passionate about reading wagon”.  I have so many things all pulling for my time I can’t decide if the kindle would make reading an easier thing to fit in throughout my day, or a really expensive novelty.  That is not selling the product short, its meerly pointing out how it would fit into my life.

I am noticing a serious disappearing act going on at Hotels and coffee shops as far as free Wifi goes. I guess wifi in Hotels and Starbucks have pretty much already disappeared, but I digress. Why all the access restriction? I don’t want to pay for a coffee or a hotel room and NOT be able access the internet. If the establishment wants my money the establishment needs to entice me to go there. In the case of the coffee shop, sure you have soft couches and nice drinks, but so does my house! Plus I can put BOOZE in my damn coffee and surf the net naked! This applies double for the hotel room! Especially if I or the company are shelling out upwards of $250.00 a night for. So here is what I think cafe’s should do.

• Hourly restrictions: A cafe could tie a number generated at checkout on a receipt to an hour (or two) of wifi. When the hour runs out, person buys more. That way, you keep the coffers full without loosing money on the free-loaders.
  • Taking this further, lets say you needed uninterrupted access to the net, as I sometimes do accessing a VPN and remote desktop. It would be REALLY sweet that if the web login page that takes the receipt number would spawn a timer that counts down to the end of the free time. As I got close to the end, I could buy a bit more food/beverage and enter the new number to continue the timer and sustain my uninterrupted access.
• Change the access point name: As I read on the NY Times some cafes just change the access point name every few hours to something “Buy a large latte get a brownie free!” This seems like a better option, but for some the sudden lose of connection could come at a bad time.
• Or put up a few signs, something light that says something along the lines of “Free Wifi isn’t free, would you care for another cup?”

As for hotels, I don’t know the cost numbers here so I can’t comment on whats profitable. I can however say that many try and go after the sought after “Business Traveler”. The business traveler will often require net access to work long after they have returned to the hotel from what is more than likely a twelve or more hour long day. They need to work not only to keep things aligned at the office back home, they also need to work to keep things cool with the family. For example, I spent Valentines alone last year in Salt Lake City, UT. I net access and after I got back to the room spent the evening chatting with my then fiance and working on Google Docs planning the wedding. If I had to come home after working thirteen hours and then fool around with some janky web login system with my cooporate card that in many cases DOESN’T show up on the hotel receipt so I have to track in manually when stating my charges I’m going to be really steamed at the hotel.

Make the consumers life easy. Give the Wifi away free.

I’m a ball of disappointment today. Which is pretty much the exact opposite of how I was four years ago. With that said mundane items seldom cause me pain. However today they send my mind SEARCHING for reason to oppose, discourage or destroy them. Take for example the pile of leftover Halloween candy someone left in the office kitchen. Half thinking I grabbed some Starburst and a sour apple Charms Blow Pop. I actually remember picking it up and thinking to myself, “why did I hate these for over a decade again?”

Then I remembered, it was this stupid ass commercial.

There are so many things I hate about this commercial. One the off scene asshole whispering lines into the microphone, two the kid who face palms himself, three the fact that this weak ass attempt at a commercial was to make it seem like it was made by kids and that kids I guess suck at making commercials? Four and most importantly the bullshit at the end

<whisper>”Say from Charms”</whisper>

“What”….”Now?”

I saw this damn commercial so much as a child that I just finally had to immediately change the channel and not change back for a good half an hour to full hour stretch of time as though I was some Nielson house and I could subconsciously make the horrible commercial go away FOREVER. So jaded I was by this commercial that I stopped eating all Charms Blow Pops till 8th grade. For the first five years I remembered why I stopped eating them. However the last few years was just a subconscious aversion. It was like they would be sitting on the table but I would just not see them.

EDIT TO ADD:  I forgot I also REALLY hated that reel to reel projector clicking in the background too!  ARGG!!!!!

I had a plan for halloween, but the wife had different plans and when the dust settled we had three days to put our costumers together here is mine, Steve Zissou from the sad ending of Life Aquatic.

Halloween 08'

Is what my mom always says. “If you hangout with criminals or people who do things many people look down upon then you too were share that same scrutiny and distrust.”

It seems to me there are two ways to go about about looking at this.  Mr. Obama either believes in the things that Rev. Wright and Bill Ayers believes and he is on a dangerous fringe.  A fringe that exists on the conservative side as well, but is dangerous none-the-less either way.

Or he just aligned with these gentlemen to gather votes.  Support from Rev. Wright gives Mr. Obama credit in the black community, which he didn’t really grow up in being raised by his white grandmother.  Its hard for me to accept that Mr. Obama doesn’t believe most if not all of the Rev. Wrights ideas and beliefs.  Its not merely a stepping stone if you spend more than twenty years sitting in the same pew.

As for Bill Ayers, Jesus.  If you have great political aspirations why would you even THINK about being in the same room with a husband and wife who might have bombed government buildings.  Its just not worth it!

Maybe I’m just feeling the great void of free time now that the wedding has come to successful completion.  In a way it feels like I have graduated all over again.  You remember whats its like for that year after you graduated.  Sometimes you’d wake up in a cold sweat thinking you missed a class.  Thats kind of where I am at.  Its not that I don’t have things to do -far from it actually.  I just don’t really want to be spending ten to twelve hours a day at work, designing software and coding.  I’m more about living then sitting in this cube.

Back to the point though, the pop in the back of the head is that moment of inspiration that sometimes happens to lucky people.  That clear vision and path to a seemingly insurmountable task or goal.  I have three things I want to spend more time on.  The first is a very easy path for me and thats going back to school for my MBA.  Which only requires a few things from me, time and dedication.  All the other normal headaches of going to school at this point are old hat.  The next is get much, much better at playing the harmonica.  Again, time and dedication here too.  One other nagging problem though is the wife doesn’t care all to much for the instrument.  I tell her its only because I am truly awful that she has no appreciation.  She remains skeptical.  The final goal is to write.  Which I have spoke about alot here recently.

Writing to me seems like the one creative flow I could actually tap into.  However, I’m at odds with myself just putting the pen to the paper and going for it.  Blogging here is easy for me, I’m just “speaking” in another way (type) about something I’ve been thinking about.  With writing (mainly fiction) I find that I just can’t get around my own mental hangup of living a very strict tangible existence.  Working on software doesn’t help one nurture a creative story telling skill.

So like anyone with a “fixer” personality I thought I didn’t have the right tools for the job.  So now I have a few notebooks lying around and a brand new Dell Mini 9, all of which I am hell-bent on using.  I just need that spark, something that will breathe through me, to guide my hand as I heard many writers describe.  Whiskey is often the answer for many who get stuck without words.  In my case I’m scared I’d need an awful lot of Jack Daniels to help me un-stick the ideas bottled up in my head.

Is the first big story the hardest?  Or am I making an attempt to climb a mental Everest without even “hiking” a day in my life?

Its been a recent observation of mine that people don’t want better millage in cars. Instead of taking personal action to improve gas millage most people want technology to work around them. I’m sure plenty of you reading this are shaking your head and saying “No, people want real change in the cars available”.

To you I say think about this. How recent was the last time you were at a stop light that just turned green and saw a Prius speeding off the line. Or some other hybrid doing eighty or more miles an hour on the highways. There is a wash of great cars on the market that delivery impressive MPG, the problem is most of these cars are lacking in one thing… Popularity. The Prius sees record sales because it is popular, because the green movement is the talk of the town. However, few of the Prius owns actually drive the car to conserve gas.

We lost something since the gas crisis of the 70’s, there was a rule -an understanding that any quick motion on the gas pedal will decrease gas millage exponentially. During the crisis, people used to imagine that an egg was behind the gas pedal and used light and slow pressure to keep the imaginary egg from breaking. We can’t say the same for how people drive today.

Today, it is far too common to see a driver of a MPG friendly car smash the gas pedal to achieve some sense of speed or power. Mainly because the MPG friendly engines do not produce much power for the obvious reason that the engine is saving on gas. So now, if you were to compare a situation where one driver is pushing his fuel efficient low power engine at 100% to keep up with a conservative driver in his moderate MPG sedan running his engine at 60% all the strengths of the MPG efficient car are lost.

I look at it this way. Car makers only stand to make more money off car sales when they release cars with better gas millage. This may seem obvious, people will sell their current cars to get the latest and greatest MPG value but I also think there is a double edged sword here. A pretty decent percent of people lured by the MPG will end up selling their new wonder cars for the lack of power they provide. Since again, they are not going to drive like people in the 70’s did.

Sure gas is expensive, but currently its not hard to come by and frankly if nothing is going to stop a driver from driving a certain way -mainly quickly or attempting to keep up with people who drive fast- they would be better off keeping their original car. That is if living green and caring about mpg are truly prime concerns.

I guess I have just seen to many people in California racing around in MPG wonder cars that I had to rant. A little tip for hybrid owners. The electric engine switches over to gas at a certain MPH range (somewhere around 30-40). If you constantly slam the pedal off the line you end up depleating the batteries VERY quickly, so the gas engine runs longer to replenish lost juice. Also, going over 65 MPH on the highway greatly reduces overall MPG. Try and keep the needle at 60.

Well my Mini 9 came in, with some shipping BS, but mostly with little fan-faire.  I opted for the Ubuntu verison.  Which surely limits my list of available software, that doesn’t mean I can’t make it work for me though.

Today, while lamenting my works complicated 802.1x internet connection and even more mind-numbing Linux to Windows AES WPA2 certification I realized the Mini is the PERFECT offline GTD companion with a little help of my Rite in the Rain.  My pocket pad of paper accompanies me everywhere these days.  Really helping me stay organized planning my recent wedding and honeymoon with my wife.  However, I needed a vetting location.  Somewhere that was more organized, easily sorted and mostly portable…  Also, works offline.

The Dell mini 9 fills this role.  I downloaded Google Gears, so that I can store a local database and keep all my vetted GTD actions locally via NextAction.

Tomorrow, I plan on grabbing a cup of coffee, opening my email and adding new actions to my Mini.  I’m already looking forward to completeing and tracking action metrics.