October 4, 2010: Our Seven Year Anniversary

Dominica and I have been married for seven years today!

I woke up at four thirty this morning.  I tried getting back to sleep for a while but had little success so I just got up and headed into the office.  I took my time but still arrived around six forty five.  Pretty early.  I walked in in complete darkness and it was rather chilly on the walk.  It was probably not chilly by traditional standards but having been in Texas for nearly a year now I guess that I am adapting to some degree.

Pretty busy morning.  The weather stayed nice and cool which was great.  Texas in the autumn is really nice.  Although nothing compares to New York with the leaves changing.  We are missing that already and this is our first year away.

Busy day but not insane like it has been.  I didn’t get to go home for lunch until one thirty, though.  That was very late.  I went home and Dominica made vegetarian sloppy joes and we watched a little of the fourth season of 30 Rock. Liesl was awake the whole time I was home so we got to hang out.

I left work a little “early”, although I was there for ten hours so early is a relative term, and went home at four thirty to spend time with Dominica for our anniversary.

We got some Jamba Juice shortly after I got home as a treat.   I made it during “happy hour” when the large drinks are the price of a medium!  Good to know.  I am learning all of the happy hour tricks locally this week.

For our anniversary dinner we got Thai from Blu Ginger.  I got pad Thai and Liesl ate quite a bit of it.  She really liked it.

Amazon had delivered A Good Man in Africa this afternoon and I have not seen it in almost a decade.  A Good Man in Africa was one of my great finds on laserdisc way back during my early movie collecting days but as my laserdisc player died very shortly after Dominica and I met she has never seen this movie even though it was one of the most watched and well known of my early collection.  So we watched this while we had dinner.  I feel like the DVD didn’t look as good as the LD did but that is probably my imagination.  I didn’t have a 1080p LCD to show off the flaws in the LD.  The movie is a classic and I had forgotten just how many great people were in it.  Dominica thought that it was okay.

After the movie we watched quite a bit of 30 Rock. That is a really great show that I have seen very little of.  Dominica watches it and I catch it from time to time when she has been watching it but that is about all.  I really should sit down and watch it from the beginning.  Very good show.

Liesl was in a great mood this evening and we just played and played.  Aligning my work schedule to her waking hours is working out great.  Today we got almost nine hours together!  Very few working dads managed to get that kind of time on a working day with their toddlers.  I only missed a few morning hours with her.  It is hardly like I was away at work at all today.

Liesl was up until after midnight tonight.  Pretty late, even by her standards.

Just before going to bed I received an email that made me rather upset.  I’ve lost a lot of sleep over the past week because of an issue that I am not yet at liberty to discuss publicly but I can say that it is a professional issue but not one at work, just in case anyone reading thought that it might be them 😉  But I am very saddened by a turn that events have taken and I have a lot of contemplating to do before tomorrow.  Likely I will not get very good sleep tonight either.  I thought that I had mostly resolved this particular issue early this morning by distancing myself from the situation and extracting my involvement from the community in question but that appears to have done little so I am drawn back in for the moment.

Is AppleTV the Next Video Game Console?

Something happened recently in the world of video games.  Something sneaky.  Maybe something that was not even planned.

Over the last few years, this new product, called the iPhone and its calling-plan barren cousin the iPod Touch, have come onto the market with little or no thought to being a platform for video games and yet still, without any apparent effort, appear to have supplanted the Sony PSP as the second string handheld video game platform and, from where I sit, seem to be poised to rapidly overtake Nintendo’s DS platform in short order.  What is amazing is that no one seems to really discuss the iPhone as a video game platform.  The whole idea of playing video games on the iPhone seems to have just sort of snuck up on everyone.

Now, with little warning, the hand held video game landscape has dramatically changed.  The iPhone, because of its volume, screen quality, multi-functionality and rapid update schedule (when compared to traditional video game consoles) represents a serious threat to the way that video games have traditionally been handled for the hand held market.

Perhaps the paradigm shift has occurred simply because, unlike traditional hand held consoles, the iPhone earns its revenues via other channels and not through video game licensing.  So instead of working hard to make games expensive and distributing them through traditional sales channels, video games are cheap and downloaded through the same mechanisms that provide music, movies and other applications.  Internet distribution is a fraction of the cost of shipping cartridges around via UPS and warehousing them, securing them and paying an employee to check you out at the counter.  The infrastructure around gaming has been vastly improved.  And now, someone wanting a new game gets it instantly – not only during hours when the store is open and when you have time to get there.

Video game console makers can’t really compete with Apple from a hardware perspective.  Apple owns their stack, top to bottom, and spreads its resources amongst many products reducing the cost to produce any single one.  They make their own processors, their own operating system and all the other major components giving them a pricing advantage.  Apple is able to charge more for their products because they are not judged by the merit of being a video game platform but of being a mobile computing platform.  By being multi-purpose, the iPhone is able to deliver a better video game experience.

There is a hidden feature of the iPhone and its kin as well: public impression.  Let’s face it.  If you are riding the train heading into the office in midtown, playing your DS or PSP can be a little embarrassing.  Not that there is anything wrong with it but if you are a corporate executive trying to look the part it may not fit the image for which you are looking.  It also means carrying an extra device with you all day.  But using an iPhone as a multipurpose device means that people on the train can’t tell when you are playing Fruit Ninja or sending an email firing the COO for spending the day playing Fruit Ninja on his iPhone instead of working.  This video game ambiguity is a big win for the platform.  This platform is more lifestyle-oriented.

For years, it was predicted that the general purpose PC platform, always more powerful than the video game console counterparts of similar era, would overtake the video game console with the “next generation”, whatever generation that would be, and that people would hook PCs to their television monitors and stop using consoles.  That has not yet happened.  But surprisingly, the logic always used for why that shift was inevitable applied more thoroughly to the iPhone market than it did to the PC market.  The iPhone being closer to general purpose computing while still being a vertically integrated, tightly coupled device like a video game console.  Perhaps this blending of models was just what video gaming needed.

Given the surprising rise of the iPhone as the hand held video game platform of choice, should we then consider the AppleTV, iPhone’s television-attached cousin, to be a prime candidate for the future of traditional video game consoles?  The latest iteration of the AppleTV, version two, is based not on the Mac Mini like the original but on the iPod Touch sans screen and retails for just $99.  That means that, in theory, we are just a controller away from the AppleTV being able to play all of the iPhone games right on your computer!  This does not take into account the massive differences between touch screen control and whatever the AppleTV would use, but that seems relatively trivial in the grand scheme of things.

Today this may seem silly.  Clearly the AppleTV with its A4 processor is not nearly powerful enough to rival the major game consoles.  But as the Nintendo Wii has demonstrated, that is not always a significant factor in the the video game console market.  Market penetration, cost and multi-use functionality could outweigh processing power.  Realistically we are not talking about the current generation of AppleTV either.  No worries there, the AppleTV can iterate to version three before the current crop of video game consoles sees a replacement cycle themselves putting the AppleTV much, much closer in terms of capabilities.  The shared platform with the iPhone and low cost of acquisition and distribution makes it a perfect platform for casual gamers.

Perhaps the idea of the AppleTV as the next video game console seems silly.  In reality, I tend to agree.  It is, however, a very interesting supposition.  Perhaps, though, we should consider things one stage further.  At this time, Google’s Android operating system is reported to have taken over Apple’s iPhone both in market share as well as in consumer demand.  Android’s broader market appeal and greater choice of platform might make it a better candidate for gamers and multi-function use.  Rapid Android adoption could prove to be a “game changer” for the gaming market in a way that no one is truly expecting.

Maybe the biggest factors that will impact AppleTV or “set top Android” adoption over traditional video game consoles will be in appearance, power consumption and ancillary use.  Already my PS3 spends 95% of its time or more steaming DLNA or Netflix content.  But to run Netflix, its primary job, it requires a DVD be inserted.  A bit of a pain to always switch the disc for daily use.  The AppleTV does this natively – and does so while being small, unobtrusive and very attractive unlike the ridiculously large and silly looking PS3 and XBOX 360 products.  Ask the average home owner which device they would like their guests to see sitting by their television and I guarantee that the AppleTV’s aesthetic is a bigger factor than people tend to imagine.

The AppleTV might not be the future of console video games, but I expect that the iPhone / AppleTV platform and the Android will be playing a significant role in how the future of video gaming shapes up.

October 3, 2010: Oblivion Day Two

It is an all out Oblivion weekend this weekend!  Whoo hoo.

I woke up at six fifty this morning – just five minutes before the alarm that I had forgotten to turn off was set to go off so I disabled it before it woke Dominica up.  Five minutes after that, Liesl woke up on her own.  So no going back to sleep for me.

Liesl and I hung out for a while.  I did the morning chores and eventually Liesl wanted to watch her shows which she likes to do early in the morning while eating breakfast while still pretty drowsy.  When she settled in with Dora or Diego in the living room I fired up Oblivion in her room (which is mostly our “den”.)  Today’s goal: complete the main quest.

Dominica got to sleep in again today.  She is enjoying having me home this weekend taking care of Liesl.  She has been rather under the weather this week and especially this weekend.

I managed to get a lot of time playing Oblivion today.  It was great.  For a while this morning, Dominica and Liesl came in and hung out in Liesl’s room with me while I played but there isn’t really a very comfortable way to do that in there.  There isn’t really all that much of a comfortable way just for me to play as there is just a traditional couch and no ottoman there.

Dominica suggested that we move the PS3 from Liesl’s room out to the living room so that I could play Oblivion there.  That was a bit of a pain but made it much more comfortable for everyone to hang out as a family.

Because I was focused on wrapping up the Mage’s Guild quest line and the main quest story there was a lot more plot and character development in my gameplay today so Dominica watched it a lot more like a movie than most of my Oblivion game play.

For dinner I ran to Rockfish in the middle of the afternoon and picked up some takeout.  I didn’t realize this but appetizers are half off during a football game (I didn’t realize that there was one of those either) so it is crazy cheap to eat there if you plan correctly.

This evening I managed to push through after wrapping up the Mage’s Guild this morning to finally, finally complete the main story arc.  I started playing Oblivion when we first bought the Playstation 3 when we moved to Peekskill before Liesl was born!  She turns two next month.  That is two years of playing Oblivion.  I am far from done but the main story, the one that kicks off the game, is finally done.

Total playing time to get to the end of the main story… one hundred and seventy five hours.  A very, very long time and I’m sure that there are at least twenty five hours of game play left.  Maybe many more.  I have only just started the thieve’s guild arc and have not begun the Dark Brotherhood arc yet and I haven’t even so much as set foot on the Shivering Isles.  I know that there are a few miscellaneous quests left scattered around for me to find and I did not even touch the daedra quests yet.  Lots and lots of stuff left for me to do.  My guess is that this game will scale to around two hundred and twenty five hours in total with me still missing little things here and there.  I certainly have come nowhere near having seen the entire game yet.  I’ve probably only covered 10-20% of the countryside and only half of the dungeons!

Liesl discovered that she could make a blanket fort with the fleece that I was covered up with on the couch.  My legs were on the ottoman and she would climb between the couch and the ottoman under this king-sized fleece.  She thought that that was great fun.

I managed to get a lot of Liesl time this weekend.  Tomorrow is going to be tough when I have to go back to work.  She hates Mondays just like I do.  She just gets used to having me around and then I am gone again.

October 2, 2010: Oblivion Day One

Had to get up at a quarter till seven as I have deployments for online trading in the Middle East plus a SAN migration going on this morning.  Nothing too crazy but it is all pretty early so no sleeping in for me.

Work went well and Liesl was awake around seven thirty so we got to hang out quite a bit this morning while Dominica and Oreo slept in.  We read books, watched Dora, played, ate breakfast and just hung out.  We got several hours of time together just us which was nice.

Once Liesl was bored with playing with daddy I put Oblivion in on the PS3 in Liesl’s room.  Fable III releases later this month and my goal is to have Oblivion done and out of the way so that Fable III can get my full and undivided attention.  I’ve been waiting for about two years for Fable III to release so this is a very big deal.  Dominica is excited as well as I am guessing Francesca is as she is playing through Fable II right now.

As of early this morning I was one hundred and fifty three hours into Oblivion and still heavily involved in discovering new areas and finding new quests.  I just can’t get over the scope of this game.

One of the things that I had wanted the iPod Touch for was the ability to look up video game help while playing games without having to go to another room, have a laptop sitting next to me or making Dominica do it for me.  This morning was the first test of that and as expected it worked great.  I was able to easily use the iPod for web surfing and looking things up on it was almost as easy as doing it on a regular computer.  Win.

After Dominica got up she wanted donuts so I drove out to the corner of Story and Northgate to Story Donuts and got us a dozen donuts for the weekend.  We’ve been wanting to do that for a week or two now and finally managed to pull it off.

I managed to get quite a lot of time in playing Oblivion today.  It was great.  This whole weekend is planned as “do nothing” time.  Dominica and Liesl have been napping extensively and I am getting enough time to actually “get into” Oblivion again and not just be pushing through trying to complete a single quest before having to turn it off again.

For dinner we just ordered in from Domino’s Pizza which we do about once every two weeks.

Overall it was a very relaxing day.  Pretty much nothing to report.

October 1, 2010: Crazy Day and Rockfish Martinis

I did my Friday morning call from the house this morning which allowed me to sleep in and spend some time with Liesl before going into the office.  It was a nice morning although I could already see that it was going to be a very busy day at work.

It was crazy from the moment that I got to the office this morning and just went and went.  I did manage to out late for lunch and come home for a little while.  Liesl’s nap schedule has been matching my lunch schedule pretty well for a while now which is awesome because we are getting so much more time together than we used to get.

The afternoon was completely crazy too.  By three I was feeling pretty exhausted just from trying to keep up.  It makes the day fly by but boy do you feel worn out by the time that it is all done.

It was a rough day for everyone so after work three of us went over to Rockfish for dinner and martinis.  It is not very often that the guys from work go out for drinks so that was a really nice change.  We ate there and I got food to go for Dominica who hadn’t felt like going out tonight – we were out at the club just last night.

It was eight thirty when I got home (I know… what a party animal) and we hung out as a family for a few hours.  I had to work at ten but that didn’t take too long.  Fortunately because after a really long day having to work tonight and then again tomorrow morning at seven makes for little chance to catch up on my rest.

This weekend we have nothing planned and will just be home hanging out.  We need a weekend of downtime!