4.3 - Who is John Galt? Is he a gamer?

I enjoy video games. I enjoy them quite a bit, actually. Unfortunately, life is short, and the choices many, so I don't get to partake as often as I'd like. I'm sure my playing time will be even more limited as the job hunt continues and the semester progresses.

Since the kids were so great on our cross-country excursion, I bought me, er, them a Wii. What an amazingly fun piece of equipment that is. I know it has to be good exercise, too; the day after we hooked it up I was sore (my arms and back -- not my thumbs!).

I think Nintendo has been paying attention. Perhaps they've been learning from Apple's commitment to giving the customer what they want. The Wii does just enough, but not too much. It's simple to use and so much fun. I think I can even say that having played both Wii Golf and real-life mini-golf in the last week, I'd rather play on the Wii.

This wasn't supposed to be about the Wii. It's just so darned fun...

My favorite computer games have always been the ones most often labelled "First-Person Shooters." Whether you're actually shooting or not, I like putting myself into the game. Doom, Half-life, Myst, Unreal, Grand Theft Auto--all great (I can't wait to play a FPS on the Wii... sweet!... again I digress).

Anyway, I recently began hearing about BioShock, a new FPS which is set in Rapture, an underwater version of Ayn Rand's capitalist utopia gone awry. I think Ayn Rand got a lot of things right--most things perhaps--so that interests me. A friend of mine says the game is creepy. I'm not a huge fan of creepy, though I suppose half-life could be called creepy (FWIW, the Half-Life 2 soundtrack is perfect for halloween).

One review calls the world of BioShock "beautiful, brutal, and disquieting." It uses such great phrases as "moral conundrum" and "dystopian fantasy." I am intensely curious. There are few things as interesting as a post-apocalyptic world--especially one originally envisioned as a utopia. One of these nights I'll have to download the demo...

3.3 - Skills

I have about 5 months to find a new job. So far my efforts have been weak. I have discovered that most people who are looking for "software development managers" think my management skills are exactly what they need, but they are looking for someone who will still be doing technical work as well. The range seems to be somewhere between 20% and 50% technical, which means I really need to upgrade my skills to be competitive.

Somehow, after 15 years in IT, I managed to miss out on Visual everything. I can talk intelligently about object oriented programming and design. I've written quite a bit in ASP.NET (C#!) without using Visual Studio (long story). I've taken several online courses in Visual Studio, and ventured in on my own a few times, but I'm really still not comfortable in that environment

For example, in the online courses, they have you clicking all over the place in the development tool for five minutes or so, then the instructions say something like "click here to see the code you developed." So I click there and see a line of code I could have typed in about seven seconds. As a guy who prides himself on concise, efficient code, it just doesn't feel quite right.

Microsoft has this long and glorious history of making really difficult things easy and really easy things difficult, and it seems to me they've taken my simple text editor and replaced it with a screen full of menus and buttons. I'm frustrated... and off topic.

Anyway, I signed up for a Visual Basic.NET class at the local community college, and went to my first class last night. I figure I'm probably the oldest guy in the class and as educated as the teacher, but I think it's the only way I can force myself to learn Visual Studio. I've already learned a couple things that could have kept me from looking like a complete idiot in my last interview.

With all four of us going to school, it's going to be an interesting and educational fall.

2.3 - Choose your Bandwagon

Ron Paul 2008

1.3 - Holier than Me

I am a product of my values.

I have a lot of values. I value my relationship with God. I value life, respect, competence, common sense, and my time. I value family, friends, education, and (usually) my job. It may also be obvious that I also value my place on the couch, movies, ice cream, and those little powdered mini-donuts. Diet Coke and the BK Stacker are also on the list, but I digress...

I have a low tolerance for those who do not share my values--especially those values that are most important to me. To some, this appears to manifest itself as arrogance, or the idea that I think I'm better than they are. The truth is that I don't think I'm better, I know I'm better.

Any thoughts I have of being better than someone else are inextricably tied to my values. I work hard at being competent, logical, respectful, and educated. I have a very difficult time dealing with those who are incompetent, illogical, disrespectful, and uneducated--especially those who are making no effort to correct these tremendous deficiencies.

We all live our lives in some attempt to maximize our adhesion to our values, whether we know what they are or not. This is a constant balancing act. It is impossible to put all of your time and effort into all of the different things that are important to you. There are always tradeoffs.

There are those who value humility, mercy, forgiveness, and compassion. Perhaps these values are better than mine...

7.2 - Powering the Future

I have spent quite a bit of time lately pondering alternative power. Along the way I've learned a lot.

My current interest was re-peaked upon reading an article about the Think Citi. (It actually started some time ago with the Tesla--wow, what a car--but I digress...)

My main curiosity is about the Stirling Engine. I didn't realize that there was so much I didn't know about engines. My brain has been in overdrive ever since. It's the next best thing to perpetual motion. So many ideas, so little practical/marketable implementation. There must be a way...

Even if all my ruminations go nowhere, next time my son needs a science project, I've got one for him that's fun, interesting, and somewhat unusual.