If anyone reads this, I had this issue in Wordpress 2.6 and 2.7, with Opera Mobile 8.65 on a Motorola Q.

In my experience, it seems like most folks tend to have a single main site that they “hang out” at; whether it’s their blog, an online forum, or MySpace or Facebook or something along those lines.  When one finds an interesting link or needs to rant about politics, they tend to do it in that one spot.

My problem is that for, wow, at least 6 or 7 years now, I’ve run a forum for my knucklehead friends (no offense, guys), so I tend to spend most of my online time posting and reading there.  That’s where I know what I write will at least be read, and will usually be discussed or at least joked about.

So until I figure out exactly what it is that I want to do with this place, expect either randomness with no focus, or nothing.

Well that’s done.  Now we just have to see if this actually means I’ll update more often.

Doubtful.

And since the original Napster, I’ve hated finding and maintaining a library of digital music.

So over the last few years, I’ve played around with various streaming radio stations, and between the selections of music and audio quality, I’ve never been very happy.  That is until I stumbled upon Pandora the other day.  I couldn’t be happier.

Pandora takes all the guesswork out of things.  You tell it a favorite band, and it selects music with similar traits.  For example, the song I’m currently listening to was selected “because it features hard rock roots, major key tonality, mild rhythmic syncopation, electric guitar riffs and a dynamic male vocalist.”  I’m not sure what all of that means, but I like it!  Pandora found music I forgot about that I loved, and a few bands that I’ve never heard of and really enjoyed.  It’s quite impressive.

A side effect of this is that my productivity has skyrocketed.  Maybe it’s just the music selection, but I feel like I’m back in college in the basement working on my programming assignments.  I’ve been cranking out code and it’s been awesome.  Somehow, having background music keeps me from getting distracted by all the OTHER distractions around the office and lets me concentrate on what I’m doing.

Apparently Sam has known about it for quite a while.  He even uses it on his iPhone.  I’ll have to kick him square in the nuts for not telling me about it sooner.

That bastard.

Did some quick-and-dirty theme modifications and at least got the colors relatively close to the way they are on my main site.  Shouldn’t be too hard to tweak it the rest of the way.  I was probably due for a redesign anyway.

Sorry Jer.

I’m going through my archives on the old blog and moving over selected posts that I’d like to keep for posterity.  Other than that, out with the old and in with the new.  Maybe new blogging software will motivate me to blog more.

…and just maybe working on a new template for this blog will get me motivated to do more web development on the side.

…or maybe, like always, this will be the last time I post for months because I’ll get distracted by another shiny object.

In any case, it’s progress!

I recently got FiOS, which meant a new wireless router.
I also recently got Super Smash Bros. Brawl, which gave me a reason to fire up my Wii.

I was apparently able to get my Wii to find and connect to my 802.11g network with 64-bit WEP encryption, however any network operations (such as downloading a firmware update or connecting to a game’s Internet server) were failing.

I went into my wireless router’s settings, and saw that the channel (1-11) was set to “Automatic”.
I changed the channel setting to “11″.
I went through the Wii’s setup procedure again, and it worked flawlessly.

So, bottom line: Much like Nigel’s amplifiers, the Wiis go to eleven.

(Is that the plural of Wii? Wiis?)

Nope. Turns out I still hate them.

Being the analytical type that I am, I gave it a bit of thought. I know I enjoy the strategy of it, especially considering how much I enjoy playing D&D. I know that it’s not the game in particular, as I can appreciate the balance and the amount of design that went into StarCraft. The game makes sense to me, it’s not a lack of understanding what I need to do or why I lose.

But in thinking about all of this, I realized that there’s a common thread among the genres of games that I usually despise, and it all comes down to one thing, now immortalized as my First Law of Gaming:

Brown’s 1st Law of Gaming:
The amount of time invested in a game is directly proportional to how pissed off I am when I lose.

What it all boils down to is that I essentially hate games where my time can be completely wasted by a defeat. In most of the games I enjoy, say RPGs or Action/Adventure games, the player’s advancement is broken down into small chunks; stages or levels in the case of Action games, or character advancement with Experience Points in the case of RPGs. If the player “dies” — the amount of time lost is only what you put in since the last save point, usually 10-15 minutes at the most.

Take Super Mario Bros., for example. Let’s say it takes 20 minutes to get to Level 8-4, Bowser’s Castle. If I get to the end of the level and die while battling with Bowser, what happens? I start level 8-4 over again, and have lost, what, maybe 5-10 minutes tops? No big deal, I just go through the level again.

But, if I spend an hour playing a game of StarCraft, what happens? GAME OVER, MAN! That’s it. Defeat is absolute. All of the time I spent collecting minerals, vespine gas, building units, researching upgrades, amassing an army, exploring the map… wasted. All of that time spent advancing now means nothing. I can’t start over again from a point 45 minutes into the battle.

The issue holds for most sports games, like Football, Baseball, and Hockey. Once I’ve lost a game, that 80-yard touchdown in the first quarter doesn’t matter much.

Basically, I’ve found that I hate having achievements invalidated, and I can’t stand the thought of having to go through another hour of hassle just to get back to where I was. In moments like that, I usually end up shutting the game off, and, more often than not, I usually won’t play it ever again.

So, in conclusion, what this all really means is that I’m a complete nerd and have way too much time to contemplate things like this.