Month: July 2012

Before the criminal horde rises up and storms my house, I have left people in place to defend it–and watch the kids. That being said, I am presently soaring through the skies in the belly of a Southwest Airlines 727 filled with 120+ souls all directed at Seattle. The vacation I wrote about yesterday is taking place in Olympia, Washington, a small town an hour or so outside of the Seattle sprawl and home to The Evergreen State College. The moments leading up to the trip reminded me how haggard I have become as a parent with no real separation from my kids in a year, and highlighted a peculiar phenomenon I only really see in airports: The binary division of humanity.

There are two types of people in airports. There’s the extremely cute and well dressed set who, even if lowered to the comfortable flight wear of jumpsuits, still manage to look bright, alive, and energetic. Then there is the other crowd, the gray swath of humanity trudging through the airport proper as though, regardless of destination, the act of flight is a toll as great as that of Atlas forced to shoulder the world. These people not only dress in the dark and worn colors of the defeated, but they look beaten, and tired, and old. Sadly, I joined that rank years ago, so I am going to focus on the other crowd.

What makes them look so vibrant? At first I honestly thought it might be a socio-economic class thing. For the most part these folks are nicely dressed, leading to my presumption. However, I grew up in NYC where class mixing is a prevalent as breathing and this clear distinction never appears to me outside of airports. Suspicion aroused, I thought about this distinction longer and came to a conclusion, the separation is psychological. It isn’t even coming from the people who seem happier. It is coming from the people who don’t.

Often times people tell me when I walk into a classroom I seem happy and unburdened. I might not always feel that way, but that environment does as much to raise my spirits as it does to crush the spirits of those who notice my apparent carefree glee. That separation of attitude inspired by space is the very thing I must be observing in airports. For some folks the ‘port is a happy spot. For others it is the onset of a long and uncomfortable flight. I’m 6’3, so you can guess what camp I fall into.

So there: mystery solved.

Some Thoughts:
1. One thing that the show Newsroom talks about is the idea that nobody reports straight news anymore. Instead the message is bent to reflect a position or spark an argument. News people large becoming creative writers. They spend more time contextualizing than reporting. I noticed a headline re: the jobs report that exclaimed, Weak Jobs Report to become a problem for Obama’s Message? What made this all the more difficult to digest is that this was the first and only article the paper did explaining the Jobs Report. I would have preferred an article that read, “Jobs Report Flat” and went on to explain what that actually means as opposed to putting it into a political context and then speculating on how it could affect the November elections. Just tell me the dang facts.
2. I have about 6 usable shirts. It is time to go shopping and get some big boy clothes.
3. I will be starting a gym membership as soon as the vacation is over. The goal is to shed 20 lbs. Then I will go shopping again and get more shirts and even a pair of pants or two.

I’m not even sure what that term means anymore. For me it means an escape from the daily routine and an opportunity to engage in real thoughtful dialogue and spend hours writing one of my projects. Once upon a time I thought vacation was about beaches and semi-nude women. There’s something to be said for that, but I’m more interested in having a chance to own my writing; to really explore the worlds that exist in my mind and seek a permanent home on the page.

Every year my office provides $3000-3500 in travel and registration monies to help us become better at our job. It reminds me of something Daniel Pink talked about in Drive when explaining the 20% solution. I’m paraphrasing here, but the idea was that people who get up to 20% of work time to pursue their own projects tend to be better workers, especially in ROWE (results only work environments). Likewise, the opportunity to travel and to grow my understanding of teaching and learning serves as a catalyst for better classes as well as making me a more productive member of the job force. That second part is a result of being able to step away from routine, because I find that routine is deeply destructive to the creative mind. The more I drowned in the seas of routine, the further I drifted from the shores of creativity.

I haven’t had a vacation in 11 months. There were many opportunities, but I couldn’t take advantage of any. I’ll be using that full allotment in the coming year and bringing a fresh burst of knowledge and creativity to my campus.

That all starts tomorrow.

Once upon a time I heard a quote that went something like this: It is better to be presumed a fool than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. I’m paraphrasing for certain, but the idea remains. I desperately wish that idea had been transmitted to the makers of Mass Effect 3. By caving to criticism and expanding the ending, the makers of ME3 removed all doubt that they are indeed human and capable of failure on a, well, massive scale.

The original ending to ME3 sucked.
It was horrible in many ways, but the worst aspect was the failure to determine your own path. Many have pointed out that none of the endings of the 3 games permitted you to chose your own path, but those endings, while representing a narrowing of choices, did so in a way that left you feeling that the choices you made up to that point impacted the ending moreso than impacting the cut scenes you saw. ME2 provided an opportunity to save a Reaper base or destroy it, and the battles leading up to that climax spiraled off in a dozen different directions, each of your choices leading to the life or death of a close companion. I played that ending six different ways, finally reaching one I was comfortable with and carrying it forward into ME3. Imagine my surprise to learn my choices in the ME3 ending we’re meaningless.

The choices in the series finale were limited at best.
You got to chose who came with you, but unlike in 2, this has no bearing on the life and death of anyone. In fact, no matter what I chose to do throughout the game, it ends in one of three ways. These choices were predetermined and unrelated to player action–the antithesis of the games message and sometimes tag line.

Spoilers ahead!

The lack of choice could be forgiven, if the Internet meme could be believed.
Many of us felt that the entire ending was a hoax. We realized early on that ME3 felt like a form of indoctrination. Many Internet authors blogged on the subject, and events in the game seemed to suggest that this weak ending might actually be the greatest ending since Metroid. The belief goes like this: Shepard is being indoctrinated; bent to the will of the machine army. Everything you see on screen suggests this. If your go through past games to read and listen what is said about indoctrination, the entire ending sequence and the dreams that lead up to it reek of indoctrination. They are identical to the existing evidence. We few proud Internet believers felt we had defeated indoctrination by resisting the will of the machine at the end, this boy AI who tries to convince us to synthesize with the machines. I held my head high and marched proudly into the forums claiming those who thought the ending sucked actually sucked themselves for not ‘getting it’.

Then Bioware promised an upgrade.
That upgrade was crap. What they did instead of proving the meme was to refute it, hammering home the point that this was not indoctrination but a crappy ending that presented limited choices and few real ways to ‘win’. They added extra cutscenes to close loopholes and loose ends. They improved upon the epilogue to show us what happened to the Mass Effect Gates. They even added fourth choice–the choice to walk away and let the machines win.

Guess what, everybody loses now. Now we know the original ending was actually poorly constructed. All they did was patch it up, and by patching it removed the meme, removed the idea that there could be something more, something worthwhile, to this. Now we are left with a crappy and unexplained ending about a game that made terrible sense up until the end.
now.

I tried to work this morning. It was after I drove to the airport to grab my mom-in-law. I tried but I slept, and my kids, who didn’t sleep, played until fatigue drew them into mortal combat. I encountered the same message throughout the day. Not one person who enjoyed a late Wednesday enjoyed a healthy Thursday.

I number myself among the sleepy and the wounded. Despite an incredible level of calm in dealing with the kids, I passed out at least two times (not including right before this post), missed coffee and failed at assembling a ceiling fan. The last part could be the fault of the manufacturer. What I found in the box is not what I see on the box. So, I put that project off and went to a basketball practice where the players were out of sorts and we coaches were dead tired.

It reflects in tonight’s blog.

It all started with a picture. I was surfing the web on a wednesday, looking for something cool  and techy to slap up on the blog. I saw a picture of a three monitor solution in widescreen. That led me to an incredible youtube clip of people playing first-person-shooters using three monitors in tandem. I was hooked. I wanted to do this in the worst possible way, never once considering that the worst possible way meant poor planning and research.

I went out and priced monitors. Too expensive. I went only to popular sites. Too expensive. I scoured ebay. Bingo. I finally found and won a monitor for $50 (with shipping included). Weeks later the monitor arrived and I was shocked to realize that the monitor’s aspect ratio of 16:9 was different than my 16:10 monitors. No biggie, I just couldn’t play at the ratio I wanted.

No, I couldn’t play at all.

I didn’t have a DVI-D cable. $25 later that problem resolved itself. However, I still could not play at any sensible speed or graphic capability.

Turns out you need to be working through a linkage called SLI in order to get smooth 3d play over three+ monitors and 2+ video cards. The set I’d collected over the years no longer had the SLI connector, so all the cash spent went for naught and now I find myself with an extra monitor and no opportunity to do the three screen solution without papering the problem with hundred dollar bills.

In other words, I need to concede defeat before blowing a wad o cash I don’t have on a problem that has minimal relevance to my daily life. The old me would have blown the cash. Today’s me is willing to concede. Sometimes concession yields nice things. Now I can save that money for something I really need,like a new S-belt.

I learn something new every day and today’s lesson is about stubbornness. Losing at such a small and insignificant thing used to crush me inside, but today it didn’t. It bothers the heck out of me, but I can move past it and focus on the larger challenges in life, like grading papers and building my boys a loft-fort.

More on that next time.