Unfettered Blather

On May 31st, 2009, I will be pulling the plug on Unfettered Blather. This is not a decision I entered into lightly. In its heyday, this site used to draw over 500 unique visitors a day. I have been linked on Instapundit and was linked once by Major Nelson. I’ve never had the most popular or renowned website, but for a brief period it was doing exactly what I wanted it to do. The purpose of this site was always a means to foster discussion. Unlike a forum, by posting topics of interest to me I was able to be exposed to instant differences of opinion, and sometimes validation of my beliefs. I primarily talked about videogaming here, which is my primary hobby. I love discussing games. As a software professional with a decade of experience, videogaming is interesting to me from the perspective of both design and business, and I was always interested in talking about either aspect. I’d much rather discuss the storytelling approach of Fable II or the design decisions that went into it then discuss whether or not the game was “good”. Sure, I’ve had some discussions on what is “fun”, but sometimes a game can be very good and still not bring much joy with it.

Without too much effort, this site easily draws 200 unique visitors a day, which is enough to get the occassional comment and rare real discussion going. I seem to bring in an inordinate amount of spammers as well. A lot of bloggers scratch their heads over how to increase traffic, but it’s really not that hard, it is a lot of work. To me, an audience was important because this was a place to interact, sometimes be told outright that I’m wrong. I was sanguine with differing opinions. I’m willing to have my mind changed. However, getting that audience and maintaining it? I just can’t do it right now. Without that interaction, this place is just a digital soapbox for me, and I lack the sense of self importance to post routine rants about how wise I am and how messed up the world is. Let me break it down like this.

Games or blogging?
If I mostly talk about gaming, what good does it do for me to blog instead of play games? I’ve been in this situation before and it led to a year long hiatus. You can’t write about what you love and not do what you love anymore. Between the longer hours at work and studying for my certification I know I’m going to be looking at a choice once more. I play games to relieve stress. I write to clear up the clutter in my brain. I have other means to accomplish both, but I’d rather spend the time playing games then writing about games. I could write here and there, but that’s only going to drive my numbers down and turn this place into yet another digital soapbox, another voice adding to the cacophony. No thanks.

I need to focus on my career.
I spent most of my time at my previous employer leading software development teams. Not as a manager per se, but usually the guy right below. I loved this role and it helped me decide how I wanted to proceed. I knew I would end up in management some day, but I got there about five years earlier than planned. Now that I’m here and the economy sucks eggs, I really have no choice but to plow forward. I need to focus on getting my Project Management Professional certification and maybe after that I might try to learn more about .NET so I can share more common ground with the team I lead.

People are more important.
While I want to focus on my career and enjoy my hobby, the other distraction is my team. I made a commitment when I became the manager of this team that I would set and example, be honest about ways I could improve myself, and look for ways to grow them in their jobs and careers. I care about these people. They are not my friends, but I don’t think of them as employees. They are my teammates, the people who I rely on everyday. I owe them my best. Focusing on blog articles, formulating ideas, trying to schedule with Buddy, these are all activities that take my focus away from people who rely on me to lead them and stand up for them. We had a layoff this month and I take it personally that some members of my team lost their jobs. Did I really do my job to the best of my ability? Was there anything I could do to make our business better? I don’t know that there was anything I could have done to prevent what happened, but I do know that I have an obligation to make sure my team is always doing there best, because their jobs depend on it.

Family is the most important
I’ve routinely put my family before blogging, this was never a choice. Certainly they are not causing me to give this up now. However, I won’t lie and say that they are not yet another reason I need to give up this site. All told, not counting domain registration costs, this website costs about $14 a month. Pocket change compared to my gaming budget. Still, with the economy being what it is, every expense we don’t need is simply a drain. I want to be out of debt this year, I don’t know if that will happen. At best we’ll be done by November, at worst we’ll be done by February. Once we’re clear, I will have an extra $800 a month to fall back on. That is a huge chunk of change to me. I need to get this financial pressure off my family. It’s not good for my wife because she stresses. I’ve been out of work before and with the recent layoffs at my company it makes her more nervous. Mentally, I need to focus some of my energies on the house in addition to my career and my team. I haven’t been writing as much because I simply lack the concentration.

All that said, I am not turning the website over to Buddy Pine. While Buddy is a good friend, his business is booming and he has about as much time as I do. We talked at length about this last week and both agreed that neither one of us can continue the site.

I’d still like to write about games, but I can’t do it as a one man show. I’d consider a writing gig on the side, guest blogger, volunteer work, whatever. I just can’t do it five times or even three times a week anymore.

I loved running this website, I loved writing, and I loved it when a real discussion cropped up. I’ll miss doing this. I won’t promise that this is my last post on the site, I’ll see if any follow-up is needed. However, if this is not the last word here, it will be even lighter than normal until May 31st finally arrives.

Related hilarity here

There have always been complaints about Microsoft Points and how Microsoft refuses to do anything in actual dollars. Part of the problem is the wonky conversion. In the United States, 400 MS Points is equal to $5 but the smallest unit you can buy is 500, which comes out to $6.25. This causes no end of complaints, especially when Wii Points are essentially 100 per $1. However, I find Microsoft Points to be entirely consistent with how Microsoft does business and especially how it treats its customers.

So how do you win this “game”?

There really are only two options.

1. Refuse to play
2. Don’t worry about it.

Any other solution causes heartache and grief over a business practice that is unlikely to change this hardware generation. The simple fact is that the way MS points work the most you’re likely to be out is a couple of cents, maybe a buck at the most. In the meantime, all the ranting, raving, and obsessing doesn’t do anything but create unnecessary stress.

I don’t worry about it because points don’t expire. If I don’t have enough I don’t worry about the fact that I will have to purchase more than I need. The unused points will just go to a future purchase. I’ve carried a balance as low as 30 points, which is essentially worthless. Those 30 points are worth less than half a dollar, though I can still use them in conjunction with a future points purchase.

At best, Microsoft may end up profitting a few cents that I’ll never spend. I’m able to afford a 360, a subscription to X-Box Live, and have enough disposable income to actually buy things off the service. I think I can afford to lose a few random cents over the next few years.

I made a prediction back in December that PC gaming as we know it would end. The new OnLive service seems to support my vision of the future.

What I haven’t seen yet is the real potential of a service like OnLive, but when people talk about “A new way to play games on the PC” they’re thinking too small. If all the heavy lifting is done on a server somewhere, why would this be limited to a PC?

Let’s get a few things out of the way, I’m well aware of the technical limitations right now. At some point in the future someone is going to figure this out and make it work. Maybe it won’t be OnLive, but this is a direction the industry has been looking at for awhile. OnLive is possibly just the first to really make a go. We already have browser gaming thanks to GameTap, so the ability to deliver content through a browser is possible and happens already. What OnLive introduces is more reliance on the server side and a true thin client. Honestly, lots of non-gaming applications already do this. The question now is “when” not “if” they can get it to work.

When OnLive, or whatever, finally becomes available there is nothing that says you will actually need a PC to make it work. They might be saying it now, but all you really need is enough processor to handle the content and rendering graphics. A console with the ability to interact with OnLive could do this, a blackberry hooked up to a monitor and keyboard like I suggested in my original article could do it if it had the rendering capabilities, older PC’s in need of an upgrade suddenly become viable. The possibilities are endless.

Not only that, but it’s not really a bold and daring idea. On demand content is already becoming commonplace with movies. This fits the general public’s expectations just fine. The only thing holding all this back is that the infrastructure may just not be ready to handle this kind of service on a massive scale.

I have been sick for most of the week. Finally, Wednesday, I came home from work after I decided I couldn’t take it anymore. I was out all day yesterday. I subsisted on a steady diet of MS Saga and the newly released Fallout 3 expansion, The Pitt.

My wife commented, as she always does, that I should be in bed. Frankly, if I’m not well enough to go into the office then I feel I should at least enjoy my time knowing that work is stacking up in my absence. A few checks of my work e-mail today confirmed just that.

The other nice thing about playing videogames all day while I’m sick is that it is an affirmation that my hobby has limits. I definitely do not see myself being able to do this all the time every day. As much as I love my games, doing nothing but gets old after awhile.

I have attempted weight loss many times in the past. There are many theories as to how you can lose weight and I’ve tried many different methods. Most of my methods in the past meant increasing the amount of exercise I participated in while “watching what I eat”. Yes, that is quoted for a reason. At best I might lose 10 pounds, then plateau, and quickly return to my usual 220. This was not working.

Oddly, my near drowning last year was not enough of a catalyst to get me where I needed to be. I was making efforts to get in better shape but the diet and weight loss were not forming. I was making great strides on my mile time but nothing else seemed to be working. Unfortunately, without the accompanying weight loss all the running was playing merry hell on my knees. Things were not getting better. I won’t go into details but the catalyst came February of this year. I realized that I was going to need a lifestyle change in order to lose weight.

The first thing to go was the gym, believe it or not. At every gym I’ve ever been to there are only two kinds of people. Those that are in shape and doing it to maintain it or those that are not and workout to say they’re doing something. Sadly, I was in the latter group. You can go to the gym every day, work out hard for an hour, and not make any progress. The idea of exercise is good, but as a weight loss plan it is a failure.

I purchased a treadmill to do my runs at home. I love using the treadmill because it forces me to keep a pace and I don’t have to deal with uneven terrain, which is hell on my ankles and knees. Not to mention it saves me time because I can just hop on it and do my thing. Long term I might want to add some weight training, but right now I just want cardio and now I can do it at home. Also, I can’t avoid it, the damn thing sits in my house where I see it everyday. The gym is easy to blow off because it is an abstract concept so long as I’m not there.

According to my research you have to burn 3,500 calories to lose 1 pound. A good intensive hour long workout is probably going to burn 500 calories. The reality is you’ll be lucky to hit 500 especially if you’re not used to working out. You need to burn another 3,000 calories in order to lose 1 pound, so where do you make up the deficit?

The average diet assumes a consumption of 2,000 calories a day. Anything more and your body is probably storing it as fat. You work out and burn 500 calories one day and consume 2,500 calories then you broke even. No weight loss. A platter of cheese fries is 1,930 calories by itself. A chicken sandwhich from a popular franchise is roughly 400 calories. Do you see where I am going with this? 2,000 calories is actually quite a bit, but with the wrong kinds of eating habits can be easily exceeded. To lose weight you’re going to have to change how you eat. This is where my problem lies.

On an average day I will probably do 100 calories for breakfast, 500 calories for lunch, and maybe another 700 for dinner. Hmmm….that’s 1,300 calories a day. Why wasn’t I already losing weight?

The answer is simplicity itself, I hadn’t really changed anything. I was still going out to lunch on a regular basis. Let’s say twice a week. Going out is easily 1,000 to 1,500 calories each time. Pizza for dinner every Friday. Again, easily 1,000 to 1,500 depending on toppings and consumption. I would snack on candy around the office every day and sometimes would buy stuff and keep it in my desk. I would estimate an easy 500 calories a day. I was probably averaging over 2,000 calories a day but I figure I wasn’t gaining anything either because I’m burning more carrying around the extra weight. In short, 220 pounds was my equilibrium. I have been heavier, for short periods of time, due to even less activity and greater consumption.

All I did was cut out snacking and I count calories. I aim for 1,500 a day, but anything under 1,800 is probably good. I’m losing rapidly. I only work out for 30 minutes and right now I average about 250 calories a workout. The workouts are for fitness, the diet is for weight loss.

Here’s the punchline though, my eating habits are still bad. I’ve dropped over 20 pounds already, which is good. That’s the most I’ve lost in a long time. At some point I’m going to hit my goal. What then? The good news is my body is responding better to food. I get full quicker, I feel worse when I overeat. The signals my body used to send too late or not at all seem to actually happen now. Unfortunately, to get that way I practically starved myself the first two weeks of my diet. When I started eating regularly again my body just didn’t want a lot of food. However, when I hit my goal, which is 50 pounds, then I have to reach a new equilibrium so I don’t creep back up to 220 again. I plan to still be running and probably burning more calories.

I wouldn’t say I’m a model, but a hard look at my lifestyle gives me an idea of why so many Americans struggle so much with their weight. You can’t just say “Eat less and exercise” because it’s really not that simple. Yes, that’s the foundation you’ll rely on, but that is all it is. You have to accept that your everyday habits must change.