Thanks to an early Sunday morning phone call from Thee, I now have my Nintendo Wii. I had tried an early morning Wii mission prior to Christmas, but that fell flat. After that I had pretty much told myself that getting up early for a Wii was futile and I would just wait until they became available. But there was something in Thee’s account of his own Wii score.

It was at a Meijer that the Wiis were abundant. Apparently their stock was not announced in any advertisements so no one (in theory) knew about it. How Thee found out I still don’t know, but I’m glad he did. Also fortunate was that the Meijer was only a few minutes from my house, so it was no big deal going even if they ended up being out by the time I got there.

Meijer on a Sunday morning is pretty dead, both in customers and staff. I found the Wii stash behind the glass as usual and there were at least 8-10 in the case ripe for the picking. But of course, there were no staff in that section to help a customer in need. I had to track around the store to find an employee. That employee then called another employee who then called another employee who called the employee that could actually open the case. I happily dropped by $250 and then skipped out of the store, clicking my heels all the way. Actually, before the skipping, a guy was pushing his cart down the video game aisle and saw me with my Wii. He then looked at the case in bewilderment as he saw the stash. He looked over at me and I just nodded, telling him he was not seeing your all-to-familiar empty box mirage.

The only downside to the trek was that Thee apparently ganked the last Wii remote Meijer had! And of course Wii remotes are as hard to find as the Wiis themselves. Oh well…

The packaged Wii Sports game that I thought looked promising way back when is just as I expected and delivers in the way I had hoped for. It is so much fun that after 4-hours of play I am now more sore than I have probably ever been. My wife tells me this is due to this thing called “excerise” – well, whatever it is, I’m sure it will go away as did my guitar arm soreness after hours of rocking out to Guitar Hero.

The only trouble I had with the Wii was getting it online. You don’t have to be online to play games, but naturally being online is rather hip right now and gets you some frivilous extras. If nothing else, being online gets you free Wii updates direct from Nintendo. Upon trying to setup my connectivity, however, I came across an immediate problem. The Wii detected my wireless newtork but would not connect.

I have my wireless encrypted – as any good wireless network should be (Thee!) – but the Wii just didn’t like my encryption key. My first attempt at a resolution was resetting the access point to change the password key and some settings. That didn’t work. Then to make sure the Wii was not at fault I turned off security entirely…that worked. That concluded that the Wii was fine, the problem was my network. I quickly turned my encryption back on.

After some forum searching I read something that sparked an idea. The post I read didn’t give me the solution but made me try something different. You see, my laptops that use the wireless need a password to connect to my network. This password is just like any password, just letters and numbers – usually some sort of word-number combo that is easy to remember. This is all my laptops ask for, so naturally I thought my Wii was asking for the same thing. Turns out that it wanted something else.

I discovered that my password is NOT the actual password being used by my wireless router or what the Wii wanted. The password I enter generates a hex password – basically a seemingly random bunch of letters and numbers – and then that hex password is what is used. The laptops handle that part for me, so I never had to worry about the hex part. The Wii isn’t as user-friendly in that aspect.

So I tried entering the hex password into the Wii – which was a pain – but after that it logged on to Nintendo’s network perfectly and speedily. Now I can enjoy weather, news, and game play online without having to worry about the rest of my network. So for anyone else having issues connecting their Wii to a secure wireless network, there you go…one possible solution to your problems.

I have played hudreds of video games in my life and owned numerous game systems, but not since my first NES have I wanted a videogame system so bad. The Wii had promise of putting fun back into video games. And not just nerd fun where you run, shoot, and drive – but where you actually test your abilities without being too hard or too easy. Nintendo hits the challenge sweet spot with the Wii. Their games are ones everyone can play and enjoy themselves – from expert to total beginner.

But that “Wii Elbow” you’ve heard of…totally true.

In light of my changing of jobs, it has finally hit me why places outsource their dirty work. Yes, money is a large part of it, but it is not just because they don’t want to tap their own talent, it’s that the company has no skill (or care) to execute/create/manage the proper resources (read people) to make inhouse abilities worth the investment.

In the position I am leaving I did a lot of stuff. I made dozens of applications along with hundreds of tiny little processes that make many behind-the-scenes things run properly. I did it essentially all by myself from sketch to product. Some things came entirely out of my brain to solve a certain problem. It was a lot of fun and everyone liked only having to go to one person to get things done. A one-stop shop.

But now with me leaving everyone – including myself – is realizing just how much stuff I have touched over the past five years or so, and now they are in quite a pickle. They put all their eggs into one basket and now the basket is hitting the road. I really didn’t give it much thought when I was in the middle of making all this stuff. I enjoyed designing and developing tools and applications. Most of the time I actually forgot that most places have a team of people making products.

And there in lies the problem – the lack of a team. If the place had started out properly, there would now be a team of people involved in projects, not just one person. Now that I am leaving I see them going, “Oh boy, we’re not going to do stuff on our own anymore. We don’t want this to happen again.”

The problem isn’t that they don’t want to do it inhouse (per se), it’s that they didn’t execute or organize their resources from the start. Instead of taking stock of what was happening, they just let me keep on grooving. Sure, it got them a lot of neat stuff that worked great, but if they had assembled a team – even a loose team – they wouldn’t be in the situationn they are in now where they’re wondering how to support and create things in the future.

To sound all corporate buzzwordy, they should have cultivated inhouse development a little more. Start with one person, but once you realize the concept has legs and saves money, apply some more brains to the process and then magically you have a dedicated team of people that are making great things to help the company cut costs and keep things under control.

Just today I was in a meeting showing off a Google Map mashup and explained that it was all free. The manager did a quick double-take confirming that I said the word “free.” Apparently, other mapping solutions they were looking at were anywhere from $20,000 – $30,000. Granted it was very powerful software and while Google can’t do everything, it did enough for them to use it for a marquee project.

Ah the power of inhouse development.

I was recently nominated for an award, a technology award. Actually, I was nominated along with one other guy that helped build – add on – to a product. And it just so happens that the product impressed someone enough that they nominated us for an award. Great.

Frankly, I don’t like awards. Most of the time I feel awards are just empty pats on the back from people that don’t really know why they voted (or nominated) someone. This happens to be one of those cases. It is not that I don’t feel somewhat honored to be nominated for any sort of award. But the one thing I also am not a fan of is the hoopla that comes with an award.

It is not enough to just say you’ve won or lost and send you a nice crystal paper weight. They have to have a banquet dinner and invite most unexciting people and put them under one roof. I have more fun dusting off and sorting my Hot Wheels cars.

It happens that I didn’t win the award. But frankly, it turns out I didn’t have a chance. The product I was nominated for was a web application that allowed my company to collect and distribute high school football scores for the entire state. Despite how I feel about my own product, it is kind of cool and works pretty well. However, the competition in the category were things along the lines of curing cancer and helping sick children. Football scores or saving lives? Hmmm…tough choice.

I think awards are only meaningful when they are nominated by and voted on by people that understand what is you did. It is easy to nominate people. “You do a great job, I’m going to nominate you for an award.” In other words, an empty gesture even if it was not intended to be. The other thing that makes an award worth something is if you can tell someone you have it and they know what you’re talking about.

All awards aren’t the Oscars so you have to look within the industry. I don’t believe that if I had gone up to a fellow tech nerd and say “I was nominated for a TopCAT award” that they would know what I was talking about. They’d probably just think I was an ass for mentioning it. I saw this as one of the awards CIO’s and CEO’s love to go for because it makes their company sound great and important.

I consider my reward when the people that are actually using the things I make tell me themselves how much they like it. I don’t need a trophy from The Man to tell me I’m good at what I do. But thanks for the chance.

I haven’t had many jobs in my life and I have never “quit” a job for another one. The first job I had was in retail and that led into a design job for the company. Of course, nobody notices if someone leaves retail. That design job ended because the place went out of business, so I had no choice but to find a new job — which led to me to my most recent job as a web applications developer. But it is time for a change.

I will be leaving my post as an application and intranet developer to play the part of an Internet Services Director. Now, while the word “director” sound impressive, in this case it is rather misleading. I won’t be doing much directing, at least not of people, as it might suggest. But I will be involved in the direction of web sites for a handful of radio stations.

Since I got the intranet admin job, I have spent a lot of time studying good design and, more importantly, the behavior of people. I feel that the nuts & bolts don’t make a lick of difference if the intended audience can’t use the damn thing – and that all boils down to design and the how/why of people. I’ve written here at the Toast a lot in the past about what makes good web sites and what makes bad web sites. Now with this new job I get to test my metal to see if all that I’ve been saying is true or just a bunch of bullshit. I hope not the latter.

Recently my role as application developer took a nose dive as more work was being outsourced or purchased off the shelf – so the writing was on the wall. I quickly found myself as the “FTP Guy” that just knew where to put files on the server. I received files from the boss and the standard instructions were, “put this on the site and send me the link.” As exciting as that sounds, it led to much bordem, there was no creation happening. I felt I wasn’t being tapped or challenged, aside from what I thought of what was happening and being put on the web sites. Yuck.

It will be an interesting transistion going from applications to full blown public web sites, but now I will be able to flex my design muscle a tad and have some fun with the skills I love to use. Applications are great and I really enjoyed seeing them help people, but room for creativity within that realm is limited, especially once some ground rules were established – I couldn’t stray far from the conventions I made or confusion would have ensued.

My work environment will be quite different as well. I will lose a co-occupied office for a plush cubicle…but I gain and window and daylight! I will have human interaction too, something that was rather lacking in the previous position. Sure, I had someone else in the office, but we were always working on different projects. We could share ideas and solutions, but ultimately there was little collaboration on the way towards the final product. I will now be part of an actual team which should prove most interesting and exciting. I hope to maintain my Toys R Us atmosphere, but it will be of a lesser size for sure. No free parking either. But I will have a pimped out, smokin’ computer.

There will certainly be more thoughts scribbled out here over the next two weeks…and beyond…while I switch locations and roles. Here I go…

I’m sitting here on the couch getting my weekly dose of Mythbusters and I’m switching to ABC Family to watch the original Superman movie. I happened to catch Superman during the Good Deed montage where he stops the jewel thief, stops the bank robbers, and, of course, saves a cat from a tree. It is during this part in which I witnessed the worst backwards TV edit in movie history.

We all know that TV version of movies cut out bad words and questionable content, usually bloody violence and nudity. This is all well and good. Now remember this is on ABC Family channel.

During the montage when the bank thieves are escaping on the awaiting boat, one of the bad guys shouts, “Move your ass” – and this was kept in the TV version.

In the original cut of the movie, when Superman saves the cat from the tree he gives it to the little girl waiting below. The girl then runs inside and goes, “Mommy! Mommy! Frisky was stuck in a tree and a man swooped out of the sky and brought her to me.” You then hear the mom spank the girl and yell at her, “Didn’t I tell you not to tell lies!”
By all rights, there is nothing wrong with this scene. No bad language and no graphic elements or nudity.

But, apparently ABC Family thought that scene was a little harsh, because they cut the entire last half of the scene when you hear the spank and the mom yell at the girl.

We cut the sound of a girl getting spanked, but we leave in “ass.” Wow.

I have witnessed some poor TV edits in my life, but this one takes the cake. Congratulations, ABC!

It seems the Guitar Hero bug will not go away. The people behind the first game that I have lost sleep over in a long, long time are (rumored to be) making yet another Guitar Hero game, this time in 80s metal fashion. I am expecting it to be quite good and will grab it when it comes out. I thank the makers for putting it on PS2, after some rumors said that GH2 would be the last in the franchise for the PS2.

If the makers are smart they will continue make PS2 versions. For one, most people have a PS2, so the userbase is huge. Second, no one is going to pony up the cash to get a new PS3 just for Guitar Hero.

However, with PS3 – as already for Xbox360 – the new versions of Guitar Hero will be online to download extra content, new songs, etc. But I came across a forum discussion talking about why GH1 and GH2 is not online and why that is.

Unfortunately the person posting didn’t get a straight answer because they posted it in the wrong type of forum. It ended up asking a bunch of “serious” gamers about Guitar Hero — in serious I mean the Halo players and those others that play in teams and take gaming a bit too seriously.

One of these posters asked why Guitar Hero needs to be online since it is “just a party game.”

I hate those type of gamers…those that lose sight that they are playing to have fun. I hate to break it to those gamers that playing Halo online serves the same means to an end — high scores and bragging rights. Having an online Guitar Hero leaderboard would be plenty if you ask me. You don’t have to battle other rockers online like you do playing Halo or football…we just want to share our scores and prove that I can rock harder than you when playing Ziggy Stardust.

Shall we not forget that video games have always been about bragging rights and high scores. When I got a high score in Asteroids or Galaga, all I could do was drop in my initials and know the next player – whom I would never see or meet – would see them knowing that whoever “BDV” was is better than they are (until otherwise proven wrong).

We don’t always need face-to-face online battling to make online worth while. I would actually think makers would be happy to put these simple “party games” online with a leaderboard because the overhead to create is probably pretty low. No lag to worry about, no framerates to bother with – just upload a score and done.

I would love to see Guitar Hero with online play, even if just a leaderboard. I won’t not buy the game if it doesn’t have it, but every game should be considered for such simple options that will make people happy. When I finally get my hands or a Wii (and I won’t hold my wee for one), I hope Nintendo honors the simple happiness of leaderboards.

See you all on the leaderboard (once there is one).

You may have recently read about Microsoft’s recent marketing promotion where they have given out pimped laptops to several big name bloggers. It has gotten a lot of response, both negative and positive. But the stupidest response I’ve read thus far comes from Joel – one of the high brow bloggers that was sent a laptop.

His article about Bribing Bloggers is the most high horse article I have read in a long time. He talks about how is it low, shady, and down right unethical for Microsoft to send out free laptops as a promotion because it degrades the credibility of bloggers. He seems to think that handing a blogger a free Ferrari laptop makes them obligate to write good things about Microsoft on their high traffic blogs.

I think this is a silly claim because the entire point and purpose of blogging is to write about your experiences. It doesn’t matter if that experience is with a smokin’ new laptop or a spindle of twine. Bloggers write about what happens to them – good or bad – just because it happened.

If I was given a free laptop (I wish) you bet your batooky that I would write about here. Why? Because it happened to me and it is pretty fantastic – I mean, a free laptop! But I wouldn’t be writing about because I thought I owed something to Microsoft as a thank you – that’s just stupid. And frankly, if the laptop sucked or broke, I would write about that too.

He seems to think that when bloggers are given free stuff to talk about and review it cheapens the value of what is written. I hate to burst your bubble Joel, but there are more bloggers out there than just you, and most of them are NOT getting laptops dropped on their door step. So when it comes to reading about products or experiences, the quality of reports will even out. Those that are writing good because they feel obligated will be on one side, and those that hate everything on the other. In the middle lies us little bloggers that write honestly about what we experience, regardless who has given us what and how.

I got a freebie once because I blogged about it. Actually, I wrote about before “blog” was a word, but on the old Moogman.com I wrote about a commercial I saw on TV for a 2-disc set titled Mullets Rock. I wrote about how the commercial made me laugh and how at first I thought the commercial was a joke…until the 1-800 number appeared on screen.

Much to my surprise, shortly after I posted that article the guy that made the Mullets Rock CDs e-mailed me and was sending me a the set for free to talk about on my site. Free!? Seriously? Awesome. So I got the set and gave it listen and reviewed it. The set was pretty good, a mix of some great classic rock tunes – but there some not-so-good ones too, and I said that.

Point being, I wrote about the entire experience, not just a five star review for an album regardless of quality. Fortunately, the album was good, but had it entirely sucked, I would have said. It’s not like the guy is going to come take the free album back. Any press is good – because someone’s complaint is another’s selling point.

If I thought about the whole free-things-to-bloggers scenario enough, it might inspire me to write more and improve my writing in hopes that someone will send me more free stuff! And more shared experiences can only be a good thing for everyone.

Contributing to a blog is about sharing experiences and telling stories. If you’re writing only to get free things and sell your products then you don’t run a blog, you run a business. Good for you, but let the rest of us write in peace without worry about yourself. Sheesh.

Risk is a LONG game. Very long. Long enough to be featured in an episode of Seinfeld and long enough that everyone knows Risk takes a long time – even if they haven’t played. The fact that it takes a long time is probably the biggest reason why most people don’t play Risk, like Monopoly.

In all fairness, Risk is a lot more complicated than Monopoly, but yet both come down to nothing more than a roll of a few dice and a simple math. Dice rolling Monopoly is simple and quick – two dice, next player. Risk is a different story. Collectively there are five dice in Risk and the same two players could end up rolling those dice over and over dozens of times before anyone else gets to play.

Even for those in the midst of dice battle it is tiring. Having burnt an entire Saturday playing and rolling, I can vouch for the exhaustion. Thus, I set out to simplify the process.

And so I present the Risk Battle Calculator. It will take care of your endless dice battles and tell you who is left with what, who wins, and who loses. The RBC is intended to whittle down the big battles, but it can be used for smaller ones as well.

The RBC even lets you stop the battle when you reach a certain number of men, so you don’t kill all your men if you don’t care to – it’s quite handy.

I don’t have any data as to how much is cuts down the time on a game of Risk, but I’m sure it will help. So for those of you that have played and want to play, here you go. For those that haven’t tried Risk because you fear the investment of time, this might make it easier for you to get started.