Author: Michael

Many weblogs dwell on the inner thoughts and feelings of individuals, allowing readers a glimpse into the psyche of the writer as they move through life. Cruft has never really been a place to talk about my life in such personal terms, mainly a place for Cruft Labs research and other whimsical thoughts. Prepare yourself for something just a little different here.

Today I write about a significant personal transformation for myself. I’ve had this issue for years but few knew about it. Only those deep into the subculture could relate to my dilemma. Even my wife was unaware of what was going on. Recently, I’ve taken the tough steps to rectify the situation and approach normalcy.

Please don’t be shocked by what I reveal here, though it may make some of you queasy.

Enough of the preamble, onto the story. It’s been a tough three weeks for me, but I’m past the worst of it now.

I’m sure surprising to many, I broke my habit of using ‘ASDX’ for movement in games and finally switched to ‘WASD’.

Yes, I can admit it freely now that I used ‘ASDX’ for movement in video games for well over five years.

Imagine my shame at going to E3 and not being about to pwn newbs since the ‘WASD’ default setting was in place on every game. Sneakily, I would reassign the controls and hope no one would notice my ‘problem’.

I mentioned it casually to a few co-workers, hoping someone would help and see my pain, but all I got was rolled eyes and few ‘Dude, that’s just wrong.’ comments. At home, my daughters would ask about the keys and I would lie and say, “That’s simply the way it is…”

Recovery

A little over three weeks ago, a corrupted Windows registry led to me deciding to do a clean install of Windows on my desktop. As a result, I had to reinstall my games. I loaded Battlefield 2 and World of Warcraft and was ready to play. It was at this point I mustered all my courage and refused to change the key bindings.

Oh, the horror of getting pwned over and over and my fingers tried to learn how to move again. Time and time again, I’d futilely hit the Q and E while getting mowed down. I really wanted to give up and give into the call of ‘ASDX’. Instead, I drank a nice glass of scotch to steel my nerves and continued to endure the pain of ‘WASD’.

Steadily I kept at it until my very muscles relearned their tasks and I began to pwn again.

Today I feel much more comfortable with my new habits and no longer want to give up and go back to ‘ASDX’. To anyone that is trapped in the world of ‘ASDX’, I can offer hope that you too can get through your issues and find some peace in ‘WASD’.

Thanks to you Loyal Cruft Readers for your support as I continue through this significant personal transformation.

I have been watching several podcasts, including Ctrl-Alt-Chicken. Recently they did a short segment on making Cheese Pie. Go ahead and watch it. This entry won’t make a ton of sense if you don’t watch it first.
The girls love cheese, so I thought it might be fun to make the Cheese Pie per the Ctrl-Alt-Chicken recipe.
Enjoy the first episode of Control-Alt-Children:

Bacon is favorite in Cruft Manor. Typically, bacon is cooked in the microwave here. It is quite a production with separating the strips on a plate and careful placement.
I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, Infected, and Martin, Joey, and the Gator were discussing how to cook bacon. Gator suggested that you cook bacon “like a man” and toss the slab in without separating anything.
Now Gator ain’t a man to steer me wrong, so I gave it a try.

Thanks to a tip from Art at the office, Cruft Manor is now a viewer of Funimation Channel, a free 24 hour a day anime channel.

A few other things I have been remiss in not posting:
Mister P. writes about a Doonesberry comic that involves my alma mater, RPI
My cousin Richard is now blogging at Otigoji.com
If you want a visual display of what’s on your hard drive, try SequoiaView Windows software (via dl.tv)
Strenghting my geek cred, I had a story I submitted to Slashdot approved.
I am now a writer for the Metroblogging Azeroth site, focused on World of Warcraft news and issues.
A good article on HDTV standards, focusing on 1080p in next gen DVD and gaming displays. (via digg)
Sean “Internet Mogul” Bonner doesn’t get Second Life either.
And finally, 30+ years into my readership, Legion of Superheroes is coming to television in 2007 on the WB.
Sidenote: I really do need to get around to making a linkblog thingie for this site…

I’ve been a reader of PC Gamer magazine for years, ever since the death of my beloved PC Accelerator magazine. Recently, they started a podcast about PC game news and discussion and I’ve been listening.

Several shows ago, the initial host of the show Dan Morris left and was abruptly replaced by Greg ‘theVede’ Vederman to lead the discussion. I wondered what had happened, but didn’t think much more about it. After three or four shows, the issue was finally addressed.

What happened was the Dan became Associate Publisher of PC Gamer, formally moving to the business side of the magazine. In the world of journalism, the wall between the business side and the editorial side is significant. There is a real concern about the influence of ad sales money and business relationships with the journalists to not taint the news with concern over the business impact.

Taking over the podcast reins was Greg Vederman, new Editor-in-Chief of PC Gamer, who felt that ethically it would be wrong to have Dan on the podcast, on the journalism side, now that he worked on the business side. So in the most recent podcast, they openly discuss the issue. Talking about both sides and weighing the impact. Even if you aren’t a gamer, give it a listen, it’s the first thing they talk about, so you don’t have to sit through the gaming chat. Although if you are a PC gamer, listen to the whole thing.

I called my father-in-law Tony, an editor at a major midwestern newspaper, to get his take. He felt that the ‘firewall’ between the business side and the journalism side had eroded over the last several decades. He said that as the internet and new technologies enable things like weblogs and podcasts, the guidelines are unclear on how to deal with them. He mentioned that as newspapers embrace weblogs and citzen journalism, it’s not easy. He said it’s demonstrated in the recent controversy over a “Grandma In Iraq” weblog that the paper was running.

Back at PC Gamer, they have take an interesting approach on how to resolve the issue of whether Dan Morris will contribute to the podcast or not. They are leaving it up to the readers and listeners. On the front page of the PC Gamer Podcast site is a poll to let Dan’s fate be decided.

I’ve read a number of discussions about these kind of ethics regarding weblogs, but not much in the realm of podcasts. With many podcasts vying for the almighty dollar of advertising these days there are bound to be issues raised since podcast advertising is not as firewalled as placing Google or Yahoo ads on a web page. With podcast advertising, there is a direct relationship between the performer/journalist and the buyer of advertising. Who knows what the future holds in this area, controversy is for sure…

In life you need to be careful that you understand the price of things.

Work has been keeping me exceedingly busy these days. It’s been a slow but gradually ramp up of things to do, but now I find myself completely out of juice when I get home. There’s lots to do and I power up at the office to get things done, but the to-do list never seems to get any smaller. When I do clear out some space by finishing something it invariably is replaced with a stack twice as high.

I’m not complaining. With my personality, I crave the challenge and power of this kind of job, but it does have it’s price.

At home, I focus on the girls, the one I married and the two I helped make. They really don’t care about my title or job or the latest project, they just want me to do the daddy thing and pay attention to them. Even when I think I’m out of juice, I crank up the reserves and try to get the job done.

Once they go to sleep, I have the brief time when I’m free. Stacks of crap surround my desk. A site redesign sketch lays untouched for months. Multiple projects await my attention. Rants that course though my brain on the daily commute don’t get written. Even the escape of video games loses it’s allure.

Not that I’m sad, but I notice that I’ve hunkered down. Scaling down life to the bare essentials: family, work, and a brief decompress. The world passes me by. Emails go unreturned. Phone calls don’t get made. Friends grow.

So the cost of success appears to be losing track of many things. Today I realized that my best friend lost 100 pounds and I had no fucking clue. What the fuck?

I mean I know I’m not good about keeping in touch with people. That’s where Michele backstops me. But I mean really how can I miss out on something like that and it catch me unaware?

Everything in life has a cost, it just sucks that you don’t always realize the price until you’ve paid it.