If I Had a Billion Dollars ...

I like to think about what I would do with an unmanageably large sum of money. It's pretty entertaining. You should try it sometime.

My wife and I will occasionally say things like "If we were ridiculously rich, we'd re-do our master bath and utility room just so we could have a laundry sink," or "I'd pay full price for car insurance," or "I'd buy you real diamonds.¹ "

It's also fun to think about all the morally superior things you would do with the kind of money the ultra-rich spend on yachts, racehorses, and gold-plated staples. You could provide clean drinking water to an entire city in Africa, or sponsor an entire South American village of children through 12 years of schooling, or fund a program that helps college students meet 8th grade writing standards. (jk, lol)

On top of all that, I want to quantify roughly how much I would wantonly spend. I know; planning kind of defeats the purpose of wanton spending, right? Well, my Microsoft Excel spreadsheet says to shut up and keep reading.

Once you have the house of your dreams complete with panic room and a private E.R., and the right car (repair costs are meaningless, so go ahead and drive that 15-year-old car you love into the ground²), and a sweet $400 per person per month food budget, what else would you spend money on? How would you live differently?

Here are three rules I would live by.

First rule: Have less stuff.

Yes, with the freedom to have anything, I would have less. Probably. Well, at least in the house. Today, I keep a bunch of things on hand because I might need them again. With unlimited resources, I could donate, recycle, or burn anything I own, knowing that I could buy or rent another one if it turns out we needed that dining room table after all. They don't make it any more, you say? I have a theory that things that you can't find anywhere are magically put on the market when you offer $1,000 for Season 2 of Human Target on DVD, and hire somebody to search for it full-time for a fortnight.^{3, 4} Using words like "fortnight" probably helps somehow. With that kind of freedom, I would actually do what experts tell you to do: If you don't use it for a year and it doesn't make you smile, get rid of it.

Second rule: Digitize it.

If it can be digitized, I'd own it digitally. I've already waded in to the Ultraviolet and Amazon digital movies world, and although the content usually buffers at least once (I definitely blame my AT&T U-Verse fiber-optic internet connection, but Flixster.com has some issues also), I still think it's the future of my movie collection. So, being ultra-rich, I would gladly and painlessly pay $20 per movie for the HD (blu-ray quality) version of any movie that I want to watch. Besides, with Ultraviolet, you can have multiple people on your account, so I could share the wealth.

I'm currently accepting friend applications.

I'd buy tons of Kindle books. Currently, with a 2-7 day wait for each e-book, I can read the entire Dresden Files and Jack Reacher collections for free through my local library, without ever leaving my home. But in the immortal words of Homer⁵, "40 seconds? But I want it now!"

Third rule: No more wasteful impulse buying.

Make no mistake, I'd be all about buying crap on impulse, but I'd have rules. Do you own any movies/books/music that you haven't seen/read/heard since you bought them? I most certainly do.⁶ To keep myself in check, I would have a rule that if I'm not going to use it right now (books⁷, movies, and CD's), or if I bought something similar and haven't used it yet (clothes, food, and stun guns), I can't buy anything new.

I’m sure I'll think of another rule when I win the lottery without playing, and I'll update you then.

So how much would this new lifestyle actually cost?

- Go on two amazingly luxuriously suite⁸ 14-day cruises every year ($1000 / month)
- Pay someone to do beautiful things with my yard ($200-ish per month? Maybe?)
- Get a premium car wash and wax every two weeks ($100 / month)
- Go to the movies twice a month ($120 / month including concessions & babysitter)
- Buy up to 2 Ultraviolet HD movies per week ($240 / month)
- Buy a Kindle book a week ($10-75 / month)
- Buy a top-of-the-line computer at least once a year ($200 / month)
- Buy a top-of-the-line smartphone at least once a year ($85 / month)
- Get a data plan ($50-75 / month), 'cause I don't have one
- Get Netflix Instant Streaming and DVD's. And Hulu Plus. AND Amazon Prime. ($31 / month)
- Write in my blog more often (priceless)

So apparently, excluding the yard care and travel (you know, the boring stuff), I would feel irresponsibly rich with only $11,112 in additional discretionary funds per year. That's all it takes.

A few years ago, I listened to a caller on the Dave Ramsey show who was concerned that his mother might spend his family into bankruptcy. She could spend up to $50k in a weekend! It turned out the family fortune was in the ballpark of $20M, so at that burn rate they would be bankrupt (assuming no interest income) in 400 weeks (7.7 years). If she only spends $10k per week, they're good to go for over 35 years. Based on my extremely frugal wish list above, give me that money and I'll make it last a lot longer.

No seriously. Give me that money.


Footnotes
¹ Just kidding, I wouldn't.
² Or into your jerk boss's Tesla. No need to worry about the increased insurance premiums. Just make sure it looks like it was an accident.
³ It's deliciously wasteful, right?
⁴ Okay, I don't even know if they ever released it, but I'm jonesing for it, so if you can find it, TELL ME!
⁵ Simpson
⁶ Ugh. Now I feel guilty about my existing (much smaller scale) reckless spending habits. … Okay, I just listened to Awolnation - Sail. I don't need to feel bad about that $0.74 any longer. … And now I just re-listened to my favorite "Sail" cover. And then the Pentatonix Daft Punk remix. But wasting time is what being ultra-rich is all about (I presume). I'm just getting in character.
⁷ I just went to Amazon to price their Kindle books, and I almost bought their $0.99 Natural Born Thrillers Box Set. I don't even like thrillers, but there are 12 of them! How can you pass that up?!
⁸ See what I did there?

Pacific Rimshot

SPOILER ALERT. As in, if you liked it and don't want that spoiled for you, you shouldn't read this. Also, I have lots of plot spoilers. Finally, I didn't even try to be funny here; if anything, this movie left me angry.

I'm finally getting around to posting this because so many people seems to think Pacific Rim was a good movie, and it wasn't. Rotten Tomatoes reviews gave it a healthy 72%/78% rating. Howard Tayler said it cleared his "threshold of awesome".

I put it in the same category as the Transformers movies; it's better if it's on mute.

Conclusion: It was fun once, but I won't be paying for the Blu-Ray. I could watch the action sequences again, but not the rest of the movie.

Pros:
The premise was interesting and fun. Large aliens build a wormhole to the bottom of the Pacific ocean, and send marauders (Kaiju) through periodically. Humans built Jaegers (giant robots) to defend themselves against the Kaiju.

The fight scenes were very cool. The first one was only okay, but starting in the middle of the movie they were really good. In the final fight, there were a few moments where I got really excited because I found myself hoping they would do something specific because of how cool it would be, and they actually did it!

Closing credits images were amazing. They showed the Jaegers from the movie, but in shiny, crisp CGI. So cool.

Cons:
First, let's agree that the reason to like the movie is because of the monsters, the robots, and the fight scenes. To win over their fans, they didn't have to deliver a Tom Hanks dramatic performance or an Aaron Sorkin script; they just had to have a plot that wasn't Swiss cheese, actors that aren't so bad that they constantly remind you that you're watching a movie, have cool robots, and have cool fights. While I enjoyed the fights, I still think they failed in a big way at three of these four goals.

The first fight scenes were mediocre at best. They were clearly saving their best for later, so I won't hold it against them, but I also won't be re-watching those fight scenes ever, because they were boring.

Now, I'm going to criticize the robots, but I'm not even going to argue that if you have the technology capable of building these robots, you could deploy it as different weapons that would be more effective against the Kaiju; let's ignore that entirely. The Jaegers were very, very stupidly designed for the fighting techniques they used. Punching was the primary attack, so name one reason you would not design your machine with short, retractable Wolverine-style blades, or better yet with a bolt pistol (used to stun animals before they're slaughtered) that is triggered by contact. Anyone? No, they only added a (very time-consuming) rocket booster to the elbow so they could punch harder (and less frequently) once.

Seriously, this is a huge drawback for me, since it seemed like over 50% of the blows delivered were basic punches at various angles. This tells me one of two things. They either unintentionally designed the machines badly, which is unforgivable given the audience expectations mentioned above, OR they intentionally made them less effective so the fight sequences could be longer, which tells me they're crappy writers who do things because the plot requires it. Or both.

Next, the plot and script, while not expected to be good, were so bad that they frequently jolted me out of my movie-viewing experience.

Issue #1. They decided to shut down the giant robot program because they felt building a giant wall around THE ENTIRE PACIFIC OCEAN was a better idea. The first time it was tested, the kaiju breached the wall within *an hour*. So, you thought giant monsters capable of destroying giant killer robots would be incapable of climbing or knocking down a wall? That's what the best and the brightest came up with? This incredibly idiotic decision is what the writers used to ensure there were only 4 robots remaining for the final battle. Without all applicable world leaders agreeing on this there would have been more robots available, and the final battle would have been easy. They did it this way because the plot required it. And when characters make decisions because the plot requires it, you've failed as a writer.

Issue #2. Frequently, characters kept secrets from each other, not because the characters would have kept those secrets, but rather because the writers needed them to keep secrets in order to maintain suspense and have big reveals.

The first unnecessarily kept secret that was also a major plot point was when Pentecost refused to tell Raleigh why Mako couldn't be his co-pilot. He reiterates this restriction multiple times, and refuses to tell him why every time. Raleigh has already established himself as a bit of a loose cannon, so if he were behaving in character, he would have said "I've found my co-pilot. If you can't give me a good reason why Mako can't be my co-pilot then you're going to be looking for two pilots instead of one." Instead his reaction was basically "I'll happily be paired up with somebody incompetent because I suddenly respect you and believe you must have a good reason why I can't be paired with the only qualified person here."

Then Pentecost gives in the next day without an iota of explanation and makes Mako Raleigh's co-pilot. You can't make it such a big issue for Raleigh, and then never explain it to him. Or to me. I still don't understand it. Was Pentecost being overprotective and thinking of Mako like a daughter (flashbacks would be the only evidence supporting that), or did he think she was too volatile to drift with because of her terrible past (see below)? Major plot points with insufficient explanation are a sign of incompetent story-telling.

Second big plot point with an unnecessarily kept secret: Chuck Hansen (the son of the father-son duo) storms into the hangar minutes before the final fight, angry that he doesn't know who his co-pilot is going to be. Then the big reveal (with a hero-shot and everything) is that Pentecost is going to be his co-pilot. Keep it a secret from everybody else if you want, but don't keep it a secret from the pilot. The writers wanted this big reveal, and the way they chose to do it was to make something illogical happen.

Issue #3. I'm just going to start listing things that are stupid, or done badly.

The scene where Mako and Raleigh first drift together, they do so in the head of a fully active robot. Mako gets trapped inside terrifying memories, and nearly fires the plasma cannon at the entire scientific staff. Very tense. Except that they should never have been in the machine. If drift compatibility is so hard to come by, wouldn't they absolutely, certainly, with no question, have a separate chamber for pilots to work out the kinks of drift compatibility prior to putting them in a live robot?

If Pentecost's reason for keeping Mako from being Raleigh's co-pilot was that he feared whether her memories would take over during the drift, then couldn't they just drift a few times to work out the kinks?

In the wormhole, Raleigh needs to overload the nuclear reactor. Ask yourself, in action movies requiring the detonation of a bomb to save the day, what technical issue has been completely over-done? If you said "something goes wrong and the bomb has to be triggered manually, likely sacrificing the life of either the hero or the protagonist", you'd be right. You'd also be a Pacific Rim scriptwriter. I actually rolled my eyes and almost turned off the movie when he received the "Manual Activation Required" error.

Shortly thereafter, mission control concludes that either Mako or Raleigh (I can't remember any more) is dead, explicitly stating that the only way (s)he could be alive is if the life sensors were malfunctioning. Which they were. Of course. Conflict presented and resolved in 30 seconds, because it was totally unnecessary.

Idris Elba (Pentecost) is a real dramatic actor. So how do you justify his last words being "I'll always be here for you. You can always find me in the drift"? Is he invoking an inconsistent and heretofore unexplained principle about drifting that anybody who dies while drifting has their mind detached and floating around somewhere out there? Or is it just a really corny line?

The two doctors were both caricatures, not characters.

Both doctors had pet theories about the kaiju. Both ended up being right. Neither one makes sense. One determined a way to calculate how frequently kaiju would come through the Breach, but that was never explained, so I'm going to go ahead and assume the writers don't have an explanation for it. The other determined that it was possible to engage a mental drift with the aliens, and did so in order to obtain information that saved the planet. One question: How on earth were they drift-compatible?

Ron Perlman getting eaten was really stupid and meaningless. He died while mouthing off about how of course he knew the monster couldn't have had the necessary lung capacity to survive, whereas there was nothing to imply that he would have known that, so it was immediately apparent that this dialogue existed for no other reason than as a setup for him to get eaten. Stupid and contrived. However, even dumber was that he was still alive and completely unharmed. The first bite was a *bite*. He was pierced by teeth. He would have bled out long before the first easter egg in the closing credits.

In conclusion, they did the big things wrong, and they did the little things very wrong. This is a terrible movie.

Doesn't Add Up

Some days, I think my blog posts are really long. Then I compare them to The Simple Dollar, Jen Hatmaker, Penelope Trunk, or (if I'm desperate, the fallen-from-grace-since-JD-left) Get Rich Slowly, and I realize that my posts are actually rather short.

They just happen to take a long time.

I get an idea, write it out, fine tune it, then set it aside. Then I re-write the introduction, which means I break the joke set-ups and have to re-build the whole thing. When I think it's almost good enough to post, I have my wife read it. Her reaction (or lack thereof) makes me remove the lame jokes¹ and fine tune the rest, word smith, and generally trim. At this point it would be funny to say "and then I re-write it all over again," but I don't, because now it's brilliant and it makes my wife laugh. It's also very different from my rough draft. From the first draft to the final, I probably keep about 70% of my ideas and 35% of my wording.

I take all this time because I hate the idea of putting something out there that can be criticized legitimately².

Not to mention that the whole world would fall apart if somebody left a joke in the comments that was funnier than my blog. True, it's not much of a risk for a blog that averages just under one comment per post, but someday I'll be famous and people will go back and read my archives and leave comments, and I need to be funnier today than the iPhone's Auto-Troll app will be twenty years from now³.

I didn't do all of that this time. This took about 45 minutes of time that I was supposed to spend doing something else. So, enjoy at your own risk.


¹ Yes, the jokes you see all cleared that hurdle.
² I define legitimate criticisms as the ones that make me feel bad.
³ You know this is going to be one of the first commercial uses of Artificial Intelligence capable of real human conversation.

Book Club for Men

Some friends and I decided to start a book club for men. We all like reading, we all like talking about books, and we all think girls are icky, so it seemed logical. We played it by ear (what's past tense of "wing it"?) for the first four book selections, but now it's time to pick books for the rest of 2013. This way we can start looking for good deals or check them out early from the library to save money for important things like tools, raw meat, and spa days.

We have a few guiding principles for choosing books. First, the book has to be at least somewhat manly. No girly books allowed. No glistening vampires or talking about emotions. Romance is a side plot at the most, and somebody had better die a violent and honorable death.

Second, as one club member so eloquently stated, "I don't want to read any books that will make me a better person." We just kind of nodded when he said that. It was a foregone conclusion.

Third, we're focusing on Sci-Fi and Fantasy. I'll totally re-read Rainbow Six if it gets voted in, but most of us aren't looking for profanity-laden military action novels. We want to read about a world that doesn't exist, with awesome characters, good writing, and good plot development.¹ And it's kind of required to have either magic or some technology that is indistinguishable from magic (at least to my primitive mind).

Everybody is supposed to suggest 3 books, so I just spent two hours trying to research good Fantasy novels I haven't read. I already know I love everything Brandon Sanderson has ever published (though I'm unschooled in the ways of the Wheel of Time series), and I appreciate Patrick Rothfuss' Kingkiller Chronicles (love his prose, not impressed with his pacing, could do without the sex scenes), but most of us have already read those. We need fresh meat.²

Trying to find reliable Fantasy novel reviews is like trying to find reliable fast food restaurant reviews. Someone who hates Taco Bell could be a food snob, could hate Mexican food specifically, could love a rival (Taco Cabana? Seriously?), or it could be because Taco Bell is actually bad. Without trying it for yourself, you just don't know. Half of you are thinking to yourselves right now, "Taco Bell is awful! Their beef isn't even beef! This is no contest." The other half of you can meet me at the nearest drive-thru in about 15 minutes.

If we can't agree on the quality of a product as simple as fast food (it's the same 8 ingredients organized differently), how will we ever agree on whether a book series is good?

They certainly couldn't agree online:

The book was too slow. - Did you even read the same book? I couldn't put it down! - The plot was derivative, especially where [insert SPOILER here because the reviewer is a giant jerk]. - There were too many characters. - I loved all the characters! - The descriptions were too long. - I loved the way the author's detailed descriptions really transported me there! - It was too straightforward; you don't even have to try to figure things out. - Sure, you may have to re-read it four times to figure out what's going on, but it's worth it! - The series was great, but it's like the author gave up in the last 30 pages.³ - This added nothing new to the genre, so I will discard it offhandedly. - It started slowly, but by the end of the second 1,000 page book, things really started to pick up.

Two. Hours. Of that. And what happens when most people agree that A Song of Ice and Fire (a.k.a. Game of Thrones) is good? Then I have to google whether it's "clean," and I find that it's "dark and gritty" and also "extremely gory" with "graphic sex scenes," and "will ruin your innocence the way Michael Bay ruined Transformers." I'm not reading that.

So, any suggestions that don't suck⁴?


¹ And did I mention no sparkling vampires?
² Which is particularly meaningful in retrospect, because we picked a zombie book.
³ Surprisingly, that last review was not with regards to Mockingjay.
⁴ I really, really, really mean it; no sparkling vampires.

Partially Excused

There was a time when I thought writing a short story was a great idea. I outlined, wrote a chapter or two, came up with a vague idea for the climax, and got distracted by something shiny. Not finishing it has not haunted my dreams¹.

Turns out I'm not much of a writer.

That hasn't decreased my love for Writing Excuses, an entertaining and instructional podcast for aspiring authors. The podcasters include Brandon Sanderson (my favorite published author in the entire world), Howard Tayler, Dan Wells, and Mary Robinette Kowal. Over the years they've proven that they know a lot about writing, and especially about how to think while writing. They've done episodes analyzing each other's work in-depth, and they talk about decisions in their own writing in such a captivating way that I just had to try it all.

Howard's Schlock Mercenary is a web comic, and it's now on my regular rotation. I also take into consideration Howard's movie reviews before deciding whether I need to see something in the theaters².

I haven't read Mary's stuff yet, but I'm still young³.

Most recently (yesterday), I've been reading Dan Wells. A few months ago, I decided to check out Partials from the local library. There were times when I didn't think I'd finish it before its due date, but I liked the premise and persevered. It is a post-apocalyptic world containing the last remnants of the human race and the Partials, the bio-synthetic soldier race that humanity created. A war with the Partials killed many humans, but is not ongoing. A virus with no known cure killed many more, and those left over are immune, but newborns are not. So the human race is facing a slow, drawn out extinction, and our strong-willed protagonist is determined to find a cure. 3.5 stars out of 5.

Wells bridged the gap between Partials and Fragments (book 2 of the trilogy) by releasing a short story called Isolation that quickly fleshed out the backstory of another character. Isolation was absolutely brilliant, and some fans said that this was the quality of writing they'd come to expect from Wells . That got me excited about the rest of the series. I enthusiastically give Isolation 5 stars out of 5.

Then came Fragments. It took me two 14-day check-outs of the e-book to finish Fragments. That's almost an entire month that I spent procrastinating instead of reading⁴. Writing Excuses talks frequently about following the rule, "in late, out early," which helps keep the story interesting and moving quickly. Fragments asked that rule out on a date, then stood it up and Facebooked about its crush on the whole Tom Bombadil section of The Fellowship of the Ring.

Basking in Isolation's afterglow, Fragments opened brilliantly, then drizzled boredom through the halfway mark. Some plot advancement burst brightly through the clouds for a chapter, and then again left us trudging through the chilly puddles of character stagnation. I didn't feel properly gripped by the story until the climax (93% of the way through, according to my e-reader), and then I spent an hour angrily writing down all the things that the climax did wrong. Characters made key decisions that were out of character for them because the plot required it (there's no Excuse for that), and a key premise of Wells' world was based on smart people making an obvious and massively stupid decision⁵.

Ugh.

I wouldn't be so annoyed if the premise hadn't captured my imagination.

With the pacing, exposition, and other issues through Partials and Fragments, I can say that the entire trilogy would probably fit better in a single book.

With all that said, because of Isolation, I'm giving Dan another chance. I'll read the last 10% of the third book (Splinters? Crumbs? Very Small Rocks?) because I want closure. He also wrote the John Cleaver series, which I'm hoping will turn out to loosely be a cleaner, Young Adult horror version of Dexter.

Wish me luck.


¹ The current nightmare is Manu Ginobli in Miami cooking apple turnovers.
² Sorry, Man of Steel, Howard told me you use shaky cam for action scenes. That means I'll wait until you cost $6 on eBay, or I may just skip you entirely, like I did with Wolverine, Electra, and Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood.
³ Okay, I just did the math (and hurt my back in the process), and it turns out I’m not all that young.
⁴ Also, sorry that I haven't called, Mom. I've been really busy.
⁵ Even more stupid and more massive than the current round of Obama Administration scandals.

My little space heater

From my unpublished archive, March 26, 2011.

My precious little (8.5 lb) computer has been overheating and underperforming for the last few weeks¹. So much that I can't even keep my hand flat on the bottom for more than a few seconds. This is not normal.

A while back, I replaced my laptop fan because the old one was dying. I'm still quite proud of myself^{2, 3} for parlaying a $50 investment into another year or two of my computer's life. But since the symptoms have recurred, I either accept that I fixed it wrong, or I take apart my entire computer.

So, after taking apart my computer, I found a very innocuous explanation for the overheating: dust. The exhaust vent was clogged by dust. One twist-tie cleaning later, I put my computer to the test by wireless streaming the Fellowship of the Ring full-screen on Netflix.⁴

Frodo and I are happy to report, the problem is solved.


¹ Footnote Mad Lib: Kind of like an old __[noun]__ of mine.
² Ask me about it sometime.
³ No, really. Do.
⁴ If your computer can handle that with no problems, then it's not six years old, and part of me doesn't want to speak to you, but does want to get to know your computer better.

It tastes like purple

I prefer married life, on the whole, over single life. There are aspects of single life that I miss (I used to do things with my other friends), and you won't hear me extolling the joys of parenthood while spending an hour getting my son back to sleep at 3AM, but I wouldn't go back.

Think of my life as a puzzle¹. The things that made single life good were lots of little puzzle pieces, and they were mostly in place, but they left gaps. My marriage is one large piece, and it displaced many of those little pieces, but left far fewer gaps overall. I like this better.

One of the joys of our particular marriage proceeds from our differences. Specifically, my wife hates anything artificially grape flavored, whereas I think it's the greatest thing since banana Laffy Taffy². This means that anytime I see a grape Welch's fruit snack sitting on top of an otherwise consumed bag³, I can eat it merrily and without repercussions⁴.

Married life is good.


¹ I know my wife does.
² She says my cheap tastes make me more loveable.
³ She says this phrasing makes her sound like a goat. It was badly worded, but there's no way I'm changing it now.
⁴ Calories don't count when it came from my wife's bag of fruit snacks.

Deprived

NOTE: This post is 2 months old, but I still wanted to post it. Let's pretend that time travel is somehow the reason it's outdated.

People and books say to "sleep when your baby does" for your first child. They never say what to do if your baby doesn't sleep.

Our colicky baby sleeps an average of 9 hours a day, in a combination of 15-30 minute spurts and the occasional glorious hour (for which he usually needs to be held). Babies his age normally sleep for 16 hours, and my wife would be perfectly content getting ten herself, so although I try to let her sleep in the early hours of the evening, at the end of the day¹, everyone in the house is sleep deprived.

Sleep deprivation is considered an "inhuman and degrading treatment" by the European Court of Human Rights. And we know how those Europeans value their sleep, not to mention their vacation days.

All this means radical changes in how we spend our time, compared to the years BB (Before Baby).

Our entire lives are tentative plans that change when our son goes from sleeping to screaming in five seconds flat. We barely get to read, because that requires free hands. We haven't played the Wii at all, and that only requires 5 minute increments. We rarely manage to get in an entire movie, or even TV show together without bouncing on the yoga ball with him the entire time. I never hang out with my friends, which isn't a change, but it's a shame nonetheless.

We also don't cook anything complex (i.e. requiring two hands to prepare). I read this post at The Simple Dollar, and marveled at the idea that people with children have time to make their own lasagna. Either it gets significantly easier, or their kids didn't have colic.

Epilogue: Two months later, it has gotten a little better, but only in that we are less sleep deprived. What time we have won back from colic has been budgeted back into sleep.

Hold on, I think he just started teething a few months early. Gotta go.

¹ Please note my correct everyday usage of this otherwise trite business saying.

Then again, maybe not

Bill Clinton's second inaugural address is my Hulu queue's Schindler's List; I should want to watch it, but instead it's been gathering dust in this virtual "To-Do" list for more than two years.

My Netflix queue isn't much better¹: I have 130 TV shows/videos in my queue, including 35 videos that I apparently believe I'm going to watch again someday (I own some on DVD!), and 20 documentaries and PBS specials that will never see the whites of my eyes². Over the last four months, I added items #94 through #130 to that list, during which time I haven't even had an active Netflix subscription!

What's my point?

I don't care enough about these movies and shows to pay for and watch them, but I panic at the thought of removing them from a list³. Somewhere, portions of my brain aren't speaking to each other.

This year, I resolved to remove unnecessary things from lists⁴. This meant video queues, To-Do lists at work, and my Google Reader feed. A mere two weeks into the year, I had already unsubscribed from a few blogs that I should care about (The Happiness Project, Political Calculations, Freakonomics), but that post so often that they cost more time than they're worth. And I winnowed down my work To-Do lists … by getting everything done.

My To-Do lists are shorter now. I still add a lot of things to them, but then I realize what I've done and fix it. It makes me feel more productive.

In the time I've spent writing this blog post, I could have watched that inaugural address. Hmmm. To make up for it, I think I'll add this blog post to my To-Do's, just so I can check it off.


¹ But, hey, it doesn't include Schindler's List!
² And if they could, I'd fire immediately, terrified at the thought of a TV show that is watching me.
³ I clearly need therapy, but I don't care enough to pay for that, either.
⁴ It was my only resolution this year. I hope I don't have to explain why.

Fishing for shares

Content sites are now fishing for shares. Not stock shares. Not market share. Social media "shares."

They are making their sites less interactive and less fun as a direct consequence¹ of their efforts to boost social media "sharing" of their content. My interpretation of their new philosophy is: If you don't "share" it, you don't count.

Many sites previously allowed you to "Like" and "Dislike" posts, or vote on a scale of 1-5, and they kept a running tally of all user votes. Voting was fun and easy.

Now the trend is to remove voting (or making it harder to access) and only leave only the "Share" option, in hopes that you will want to do something to promote great posts, and so will share it and bring in more site traffic.

I'll make an example of Cheezburger's "Daily Squee".² They have removed voting capabilities from both the main feed and the individual posts. You can only "vote" by sharing on Facebook, so if you don’t have a Facebook account, your vote doesn't matter. (Here, and here they announced the change from voting to Facebook sharing. Check out the user reaction thus far.) And if you really want to vote for a cute cat picture, you're instantly sharing it with your hundreds of friends, acquaintances, family members, and stalkers. You can still "Like" it, but that is also linked to your Facebook profile.^2.5 Nothing like the anonymous "Like" button.

Let's also make an example of Google Reader. In its glory days, clicking "Like" was just a vote, and clicking "Share" shared it with your followers (I had 7). Now, clicking "Like" shares a post on your Google Plus (G+) wall for everyone³ to see, and clicking "Share" requires you to pick which G+ circles to share it with. Too many additional clicks, and some of my "followers" aren't also in my circles. This destroyed the social value of Reader for me. Yes, that's right, making it more social destroyed its social value. I don't want to spam my friends. People following me on Reader had self-selected into that.

What about the bottom line: are sites improving their traffic and making more money? It may be too soon for an answer. But I do know that good Cheezburger posts used to get hundreds or thousands of votes, and are now getting fewer than 30 Facebook shares. Run-of-the-mill posts receive fewer than ten. Something truly epic still garners a mere 72 Facebook shares (as of this post). In other words, site owners are actually choosing to make their sites less interactive! If they don't care about my input, I'll visit less.

I hate it, and the only thing I can do about it is deprive them of ad revenue. Ironically, that means using Google Reader⁴ to view Failbook and Daily Squee without the ads.


¹ I think it's a conscious decision, rather than an unintended consequence. Unless these sites are managed by trained monkeys, they ran the numbers and chose the increased ad money from more social media "shares" over site interactivity. I also think they just wanted to change something, and ended up changing something that was working.
² So, I like cute animals. What's it to ya? Don't give me that look. I'll fightcha.
^2.5 You know they only value Shares, because they don't use the "Like" function for voting. (I didn't want to change the footnote order after the fact, so you get #2.5.)
³ If you post something on G+, and nobody is there to read it, did your personal worth just decrease?
⁴ There's nothing I can do to hurt Google except buy Apple products, and that would hurt my finances far, far more than it would hurt Google's.

Did you have your V8 today?

I did, and it hurt, but not where you'd expect.

Prices for 11.5 oz cans of V8 recently surged from $0.67 to $0.88 each. I know, I know, you're all up in arms about it too. It is, after all a Netflix-style 35% price increase (slightly less fanfare, yes, but equally diabolical).

This is going to hurt my wallet to the tune of $150 per year, so I made plans to cut back and weight wait until they realize that I was single-handedly drinking all of the Low Sodium V8 in north Austin.

Then I found a scientific study¹ that says I'll go back to two-a-days, despite the expense. The people at V8 probably commissioned falsified read that study, so my siege may not succeed.

Stupid science.


¹ You mean you don't ready scientific studies before making rash decisions?

Virtually useful

Today, I introduced my wife to a wonderful, nerdy waste of time: WinDirStat.

WinDirStat sorts your hard drive folders by file size, and then shows you a colorful, interactive chart of your hard drive usage (see a screen shot by following the above link). It also makes it easy to send unwanted files to the recycling bin (where they will continue to take up hard drive space, as the graph will show you), or to delete them permanently.

My wife was excited to see what was taking up all her space, but was a bit disappointed to realize the inevitable: her writing, which she loves, takes up significantly less space than even a single mp3.

I am always adding new files to my hard drive, so to prevent a loss in performance, I regularly use this program to help me prioritize the files to sort, delete, or move to an external hard drive.

I called this program a waste of time. There's no question in my mind that it's immensely useful. If your hard drive is full, Windows is going to do nothing to help you find the principal culprits efficiently. But after the 10 minutes it takes to run the program, find the 550MB Microsoft Office Enterprise 2010 installation file, and burn a backup CD or two; or move those ridiculously large home video files to an external hard drive, are you really going to stop there?

No, you're not, because freeing up hard drive space is more fun than most video games, and has a direct tangible (virtual?) benefit! So you're going to spend another hour looking at pictures, thinking about deleting them or saving them for posterity, and contemplating whether they make you look fat.¹

Due to the advent of the digital camera, and because I've attended 3 family weddings and taken 2 vacations in the last year, there are thousands of unsorted pictures sitting on my hard drive, and at least 500 of them deserve to be deleted to make space for new ones.

Challenge accepted.


¹ Maybe that's just me.

You're interventioning me?

My friend Jason sent me one of them newfangled Gmail intervention e-mails. It was hilarious. And yet, I'm sticking with Hotmail.

I told him so, and he asked what it is that makes me like Hotmail. I went a little overboard in my response:

What I prefer about Hotmail:
1) Junk e-mail:  I get to approve or deny all my junk e-mail. I never miss a thing.
2) Keyboard shortcuts:  Hotmail uses most of the keyboard shortcuts now that Outlook uses.  I use Outlook for work, so it's an easy transition.
3) Folders:  Gmail has labels and archiving, and that system is more robust in theory, but it's a different system, and it requires more clicks than the folder system.  My brain knows how to store everything in folders on my computer, and it wants to do that for e-mails, too.  Computers are always going to work with folders, so there's no reason to slow myself down by having to remember two different systems.
4) Legacy, (from an IT definition):  I have all my contacts here, and more importantly, all my contacts have me here. (Yes, I know you can use POP3 settings with Gmail to receive and send e-mail from other addresses, but then I have to use the Gmail interface.)
5) Chat: It doesn't try to link me to a chat account.  I hate chat programs.
6) Speed:  Now that all Google sites are linked to Google+, it's actually slower than Hotmail.  I'm removing Google.com as my home page for the same reason.  Hello, blank page.
7) The interface: To me, Hotmail looks and feels the way an e-mail program should.

What Gmail does better:
1) Grouping conversations (minimal value to me)
2) Attachments (Hotmail used to be awful, but recently improved to being only a step behind Gmail)
3) Searching
4) Saving drafts
5) Undo send (I'm pretty careful about what I send, so this has minimal value)

Where they're equal:
1) Storage.  They both give me more storage than I'll ever use.

Why I'll probably never switch fully to Gmail:
1) Habit: I forget to check my Gmail account for months at a time.
2) My username: My Gmail username is much longer than my Hotmail username (all the good ones were taken), so logging in is a more annoying process.
3) Video chat and other features: Gmail offers lots of amazing features that I don’t care about at all, and will never use. So many of these are the "selling" features, and they don't sell me.

What do you think?

Size matters

It's all a lie! I can't believe such deceit would be perpetuated throughout the ages by and for both genders! Do you know what this has done to the children?!? Think of the children!!!

I'm upset. Allow me to explain.

Short story: Today I'm throwing away a too-small pair of pants and a worn-out belt. The pants lied to me, and the belt had no right to up and die. Why didn't it think about how that would make me feel?

Long story: When I was but a lad, my mom bought me a black leather belt. Everywhere I had to go that was dressy, that trusty belt was by (around?) my side. It lasted for six whole years. Since then, I've never found a replacement that lasted for more than a year, and half of them didn't even fit.

Soon after I began college, I became aware of my clothing sizes. My working hypothesis is that it's because I had to start buying my own clothes. I learned my waist and inseam sizes. I learned my suit coat size. I learned my sleeve size (a whopping 35 inches; I'm like a monkey!). I learned my neck size¹, for cryin' out loud.

And yet, even with a graduate degree, I've never been able to figure out my belt size.

I did everything you'd expect. I went to stores that sell belts. I gained weight to try to fit in to the belts I'd already bought. I wore my dress slacks to the store and tried on belts until I found one that fit². But no matter how I tried, I couldn't find a belt that still fit when I got home. Maybe they shrink in the wash, I don't know.

It's not that I'm a moron³, it's that belt sizes, pant sizes, and waist sizes are apparently completely unrelated!

Women are not surprised by this. You've been dealing with "vanity sizes" for years. I, however, trusted Old Navy and Dockers not to stretch the truth⁴. Nobody wants to wake up one day (hypothetically) and find out that their size 32 jeans that they've been drying in the dryer for seven years actually measure 34 inches⁵.

So that's the crux of it. Women know that a size two dress may actually be a size eight, but some are happier with a tag that says size two. Not so for me.

I'm never happy in a size two dress.


¹ It's almost as large as my biceps.
² Okay, I didn't actually do that one, per se, but it's sounding pretty darn reasonable from where I'm sitting in my elastic-waistband sweatpants.
³ No, it's not!
⁴ Get it? Stretch? Get it?
⁵ After all, they may have hypothetically cut off your circulation two weeks ago.

Atlas Shuddered

Urgh.

Atlas Shrugged has the dialogue quality of The Phantom Menace, the special effects of the 1978 Incredible Hulk TV series, the casting of Waterworld, the directorial timing of a home video, and the cinematography of something that picks a lot of awkward camera angles. I needed a Big Mac to wash the movie's taste out of my mouth.

The movie was 97 minutes long. There was time available to improve the three things in which this version severely lacked:
1) Using Rand's arguments,
2) Introducing us to the characters as Rand wrote them, and
3) Preparing us for the climax.

Rand's Arguments

Atlas Shrugged is one of the best books ever written. It's complex. It's intelligent. It's a philosophical allegory, and it's convincing. Ayn Rand wrote it to make an argument, time and time again, from all angles, and she did so extremely well. I recognize that it takes talent to make a good movie, even from an extraordinary book. But it takes a special kind of failure to ruin Atlas Shrugged.

Rand's arguments made the book great, but really weren't part of the movie. When John Aglialoro¹ actually included any of Rand's arguments, he threw in some of the good lines but removed the context, making the dialogue painfully choppy and illogical.

You ruin the argument, and you've ruined the movie.

Aglialoro even cut the almost unending stream of whiny entitled pleas. They came from any number of talentless characters (here's looking at you 20th Century Motor Company), demanding a handout because they "never had a chance" (i.e. got fired for incompetence). The unproductive looting from the productive is the whole point of the book, and was not adequately addressed by the light-on-exposition news headline montages.

Speaking of not adequately addressing things …

Character Development

… the entire character of James Taggart is written as whiny and desperate, but portrayed as self-confident and somewhat relatable.

Similarly misrepresented, Dagny Taggart is written as confident, brilliant, tough-as-nails, and successful, but portrayed as vacant, unassertive, and a little dazed. In one particular scene, she takes what is supposed to be a confident "I'm telling you how it is" stand against her brother, but looks everywhere but at him. Confidence looks you in the eye.

Finally, let's take a deeper look at Francisco d'Anconia. He was cast as a scruffy, moderately handsome man whose wardrobe was at home in a local night club. The real d'Anconia is dashing, clean-shaven, full of intrigue, and stands "as if he wore a cape waving behind him in the wind." His shirts cost more than your wardrobe. Imagine Dos Equis' "Most interesting man in the world", but 25 years younger, without a beard, and with millions upon millions of dollars.

The movie showed the kind of guy you pick up in a bar. Francisco is the kind of man with whom rich women have affairs.

Confidence leans back. He slouched forward.

Stage presence is noticeable. There was none to notice.

*shudder*

Ignoring the mistreatment of Rand's ideologies and characters …

Plot & Climax (***spoiler alert**)

… this movie did a poor job of leading up to its climax (or what I am led to believe was the climax because of the music).

In the book, people talked regularly about how horrible it would be if the bridge made out of Reardon metal collapsed. In the movie, Aglialoro talked about the metal being "untested", but stubbornly refused to connect the dots about the bridge. He only even mentioned the bridge once. Small wonder, then, that the audience is entirely unprepared to stand up and cheer when the bridge doesn't collapse.

…

At least it ended fittingly; with a bloodcurdling scream.


¹ Executive-turned-screenwriter because his rights to Atlas Shrugged were about to lapse and his actual screenwriter bailed.

I hate math

Chase just charged me a $12 "service fee," and I'll give you a buffalo nickel if you can tell me why.¹

Here's my history with Chase: I fell in love with online banking because of Chase's user-friendly site. In five years I've never had a problem. Since the CARD Act, I've had 3 unexplained fees in 3 months, two of which were reversed when I called (one because it was completely and utterly bogus, the other because they felt so bad about the bogus charge), and one that I'll call about when they open (because it's 3:30 AM).

It may be petty, but I so desperately want to punish them by taking all my business elsewhere. It's not like I'm lacking options. Banks are, to use an expression that doesn't apply particularly well here, a dime a dozen.

Why don't I do it? In five years, I've earned $700 of cash rewards from my Chase credit card.

I hate math.


¹ No, I won't.

The kindness of strangers

While I waited at a stoplight downtown, a car to my left honked. This was strange for two reasons: 1) nobody in Austin ever, ever honks¹, even if you practically kill them², and 2) there were no cars in front of said honker. She made the universal "please roll down your window" sign, and I complied.

"Can you tell me how to get to South Lamar?"

A fair request in any other city that has a South Lamar, but Austin was not built with ease of transportation in mind. Although I was a tad uncertain myself, it was my civic duty to help a damsel in distress, so I guessed.

"You have to turn right³ to get on Lamar southbound⁴. It should be two stoplights ahead. Lamar is an overpass, and we'll go under it."

Yeah, I know, that's a lot of detail to give someone if I'm just guessing. Call it an educated guess; after all, I have a college degree.

She thanked me for the directions, and for rolling down my window, and then the light turned green. She sped ahead, cut me off (it's okay, she signaled and I still had the parking brake on), and the winding roads of Austin proceeded to prove my educated guess entirely correct.

I drove away feeling very warm and fuzzy inside. I think I was happier about having helped a complete stranger find her destination⁵ , but I don't want to downplay the joy of guessing directions correctly.

MORAL: I'm always right.


¹ Full disclosure: Stay out of my lane, guy on a cell phone, or I will honk until your grandmother removes you from her will.
² Of course, when that drunk guy practically killed me, I didn't have time to honk because I was too busy trying to get control of my vehicle. And if he hadn't driven off, I would have honked. [nodding] Yeah, I would have.
³ Right = North. Always.
⁴ South = Left. Sometimes, not always. It's very complex stop asking me questions.
⁵ I hope she wasn't a contract killer.

You lose

I enjoy watching the Biggest Loser. It motivates me to be better at whatever I do. Like eating pizza.

Moses, a contestant from the current season, shattered Week 1 records by losing 41 pounds. In ONE WEEK! That's a lot of water weight. I'm a fair-weather fan (this applies to everything but the Cubs), so I've decided I like him.

Like many of the older male contestants, Moses has knee problems, so disproportionate amounts of his exercise come from shadow-boxing. This means punching nothing, so although it's a good cardio workout, it gets a little mentally fatiguing. His motivation to keep going is his family, and he shows it by saying a family member's name every time he punches. Kind of sweet.

And kind of disturbing.

Kaylee: "Hey Dad, can I borrow the …"
Moses: "Kaylee!" (punch ) "Kaylee! (punch) "Kaylee!" (punch)
Kaylee: "Yeeeeaaah. I'll just come back later."

Relief

It's been such a long time since I was inspired to write. Not that I am now; I just have the time. FINALLY.

The last month and a half of my life has been so overwhelmingly consumed with work that I've somewhat forgotten how to relax. Having a laptop awake if I am has become part of my routine¹, to the extent that I can't pull myself away long enough read an actual paper book. Or a digital one.

Even when I exercise, it's to an exercise video from Netflix (who has a halfway decent selection for someone who just wants to tone). Staring at bright screens is giving me regular headaches. Tylenol and I have become friends.

When I was a kid, using the computer was a privilege. Also, the Cubs didn't play every summer afternoon, so I had to come up with a lot of alternative entertainment (to be read "normal-person entertainment"). This included using my imagination, riding my bike, climbing a tree (I was like a monkey), playing catch, or throwing a tennis ball at the side of our house in the name of "pitching practice."

We were brought up to use our free time in good wholesome activities. Our family would take regular trips to the library, and we'd devour those books. We probably even went back three times in a week. My books of choice were Matt Christopher youth sports novels and riddle books. (Where else do you think I get my love of bad, bad puns? Oh yeah; my dad.)

Now that you're old and decrepit, how do you unplug?

¹ Addiction, anyone?

Playing with playlists

I don’t love wedding receptions, but I do like running into my friends there.¹ For less than the cost of dinner and a movie, you can essentially speed-date all of your favorite people.

At a recent reception, I ran into a friend whose blog I consider a Mecca of music-I’ve-never-heard-of. Her regular postings of her workout and other playlists have been instrumental in converting me to a small handful of bands that, somehow, neither Amazon nor Pandora has yet suggested.

I mentioned to her my recent initiative to work out to music, rather than the sound of my overworked lungs. She said that she’d be happy to make me a playlist … if I just told her what kind of music and bands I like in general.

For most of you, that would be a pretty easy question to answer.

I am not like most of you.

So over the last few weeks, I've thought about the kind of music that inspires me to perspire.

WARNING: If you think to yourself, “I know Kevin, he’s a decent guy, and he probably has good taste in music,” then I implore you to keep that wonderful illusion, and stop reading now!

It was a difficult process. You see, first, I had to go through all the music I already own. Because I’m an auditor. And that’s what we do. This process prompted some deep thoughts:

1. If I’m struggling to breathe while working that treadmill, will listening to Air Supply help?
   
2. Is Will Smith rapping still cool?
   
3. Can the guy curling the two 45 lb hand weights tell that I’m listening to the Backstreet Boys on the elliptical?
   
4. What about the girl curling the two 45 lb hand weights? She clearly has superpowers.
   

Ultimately, I realized that bands like Bush, the Cranberries, Garbage and even Kris Kross didn’t make me want to jump. But I did manage to find some gems. Thank you, Three Days Grace, Breaking Benjamin, 2 Unlimited (think the Mortal Kombat soundtrack), and some sweet, sweet 90’s techno.

In the future, I’m going to follow these simple rules about making a workout playlist:

1. If it makes me want to sing aloud, it’s not allowed.
   
2. If it makes my hand tired in Guitar Hero, it’s a good idea.
   
3. Angry lyrics mean happy time.
   
4. Minor keys are majorly important.
   

I’m still going to see what my music guru friend comes up with. Until then, I have a pretty good 50-song playlist. Which will last me for a month. Without repetition. Because I don’t work out very often. Or for very long. Because exercising is hard. And I’m out of shape. And lazy. (In case you didn’t figure that out before this sentence fragment.)

_________________________
¹ That means if I’m attending your wedding reception, you may not be the reason I came.