No. Just....No.

Paul: try not to stress about the things outside your control
Paul: relax and think about puppies
Shana: Can I get a puppy?
Paul: a stuffed one?
Shana: No, a real one
Shana: Or a kitty?
Paul: hell no
Paul: let me rephrase
Paul: so that I'm clear
Paul: HELL NO, IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN IN A MILLION BILLION YEARS
Shana: But I'm stressed and upset and you said I should think about puppies and I did and now I want one
Paul: Well, think about a stuffed puppy then
Shana: It could be a small puppy

News challenge

Goofy writing challenge: Make your own news!

Is the news boring the crap out of you? Do what the smart people do -- Make it up yourself!

How? Find any news article online that you have read today. Find the second sentence in the third paragraph of the article. Find two more unrelated news articles and repeat. This is your news snippet.

Here is my example:

Google also is bolstering its mobile-ad business. The priority is to retrieve hunters who might be low on food and heating fuel, and get to them before the next storm hits, possibly this weekend, Blair said. The Standard & Poor’s 500 Index was up 32 percent in the six months to September, the biggest two-quarter gain since 1975, while home values increased by $244.7 billion, according to the report.

Now rewrite the paragraph so it still contains some of the same facts/people, but reads a little better:

Investors were buoyed by a report outlining positive gains in the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index, which has grown 32 percent in the last six months, the biggest two-quarter gain since 1975. This news comes on the heels of an announcement by Google that they are bolstering its mobile-ad business. "This is terrific news for tech savvy hunters, who have been investing so they could afford to buy food and heating fuel, which will be critical if they are to survive the massive storm threatening to destroy their small community next weekend." says Arthur Blair, Chief Strategery Director of the National Council for Misinformed and Obscure Sources.

I SO should have been a journalist.

I killed a dragon

So I've been playing (and have been horribly addicted to) Dragon Age: Origins.

Just so you know, this game is completely in my wheelhouse, in terms of games that suck me in for hours (and days) on end.

Mind you, I like just about all types of games. I'm pretty equal opportunity as far as that goes.

RTS? I played Starcraft to DEATH once upon a time. Some of my other favorites in that genre include Total Annihilation, C&C Generals, Age of Empires, Civ2 (although 'real time' in the RTS title really doesn't apply, but it is kinda the same), and I even played Simcity. (though not the Sims...I hated that game)

FPS? I was a Quake junkie back in the pre-internet LAN party days. The original Wolfenstein and Doom games were a lot of fun, and more recently I've been a huge fan of the Battlefield Series. (Side note: I'm not as big a fan of these games on the console. I'm a mouse looker. without a mouse, FPS feels so...inaccurate)

Platformer? Mario! I've played every Mario title since the original Donkey Kong and with few exceptions, loved playing all of them. I don't generally seek out these titles (other than Mario), but they are nice time wasting fun.

Racing games? From Mario Kart to Burnout, I enjoy most of the 'Arcade' types of this genre, but usually don't go for the 'simulation' games -- Haven't really played any since the old Grand Prix series back in the day. I have some of the new ones in my Gamefly queue to check out though, to give them a look.

Sports games? I've played Madden a lot. I mean a whole hell of a lot. I also played (and loved) NFL Blitz, NBA Jam, and pretty much all of the 'Arcade' style sports games (Hockey, Soccer...heck, even Tennis on the Wii).

All that said...my true love in the PC game are RPG's, particularly ones with an engaging story. The play is simple. You kill stuff, and as a result of that killing (via XP and/or loot), you get more and more powerful, and as a result of that power, you can kill more difficult things and unlock another chapter in the story.

With an rpg, you are always playing for the story. Great RPG's have a big main story that you can't wait to see the next chapter of, as well tons of great side stories that you want to finish as well.

In terms of combat, it can be arcade style (such as Zelda or even Kingdom Hearts) or strategic (like Final Fantasy). It can even be something in between. It really doesn't matter. What sucks you into an rpg is the story. Great ones are like a good book that you stay up reading because you can't bear to put it down.

World of Warcraft has an 'okay' story. It is mass-media fantasy lore that is sometimes inventive, but mostly all old hat. Some of the gameplay mechanics make for a really good game. Getting together with 24 other people to down a new boss with unique and interesting abilities? Awesome fun. And...those fights advance the story. And then you can go rehash them on hard mode for the same 'story' but better loot. bleh...loot is boring.

Dragon's Age has a great main story. The gameplay is pretty standard for the rpg fare. Combat is real-time, but you can pause the battle to setup strategic encounters. 'Bosses' are fairly easy (though some have proven a challenge). Overall the gameplay itself is pretty simple. It has some depth to it, but once you learn the basics, you can kill just about anything with a single strategy. (Tank gets aggro, healer heals tank, dps pew pews, repeat until dead). There are some encounters where you have to think outside of that box, but for the most part, that box is where you live. It's a happy box. A peaceful box. (I've taken the box thing too far now haven't I?)

The game is far from perfect. The loading times are pretty bad and even on a decent computer I was having framerate issues until I turned down some stuff, which almost never happens for me. Beyond the technical, there are some gameplay things. For example, mages are pretty overpowered. Currently I believe I could win most encounters on my mage without the rest of the people in my party. I'm just that OP.

Also, the aforementioned story is fairly typical fantasy fare. Not a lot of twists to be found.

That said, the positives for this game outweigh the negative and then some. The story is engaging and the decisions you make impact the story.

For example, do you let a mother sacrifice herself to save her possessed son, kill the boy so that you kill the demon/end the threat, or go look for another option somewhere? I let the mom sacrifice herself and now I'll never see her again. Later she could have influenced the story... I'll never know (until I replay it). She is dead as a doornail. Maybe next time I'll be evil and kill the boy. I dunno. If I did that I'm sure some of my good party members would not like that decision (causing me to lose influence with them, costing me in stats). Also, the mom wouldn't like that, so she would be unlikely to help me later and might even inhibit my mission.

You are faced with choices like this throughout the game. Choices that matter. I love it. It makes the game interesting to me because all along the way I'm evaluating what choices I will make differently on my next run through the game. And I can't wait to do that run.

Anyway, it is a great game, I highly recommend checking it out.

Team players

So last night I was playing World of Warcraft and we had some items drop at the end of an instance. The instance run was informal, so it was just a random roll off for the loot and pretty much everybody rolled on one of the items. This item was one that every person in the group could use.

But...a few people passed, even though they could technically use the item. It is just that the item would have been a larger upgrade for others or the person who passed was on an alt, and passed to a 'main character' (meaning he runs instances on his 'main' character more than any of his other 'alternate' characters).

Without exception, the officers of the guild all passed. Others in the group chose not to pass, and were instead grabbing the upgrade.

Now, to be fair, it isn't in the loot rules to pass on this item. Every person in that run contributed to that run's success and every person had rights to the loot. Just that some people chose to think of the team first, and others didn't bother.

It was interesting to me that all of the officers passed. It brought to mind a question: Were those folks more 'team oriented' because they were in positions of responsibility, or were they chosen for that responsibility because they were 'team oriented'?

Now, I didn't pick any of the officers, so I can't really speculate on why each person was chosen, but it seems to me that people in my guild are selected as officers because they exhibit a great deal of skill at their position, generally have demonstrated some maturity, and have some degree of tenure with the guild (I think I may be an exception to the latter considering I was still fairly new'ish to the guild when I was asked to step up).

My suspicion is that the 'team oriented' aspect was always there prior to getting an officer nod, but I really see it demonstrated more from those folks than I do others (though it certainly isn't restricted to just officers by any means)

The question is...why? Do you become more of a team player by being given responsibility? Does one lead to the other? Are my perceptions skewed due to being an officer? Do I just 'notice' that people are being more team oriented because those are the most visible people in the guild? Am I actually more team oriented because I am an officer?

There are many articles on the interwebz that postulate that responsibility does bring about responsible people, but I wonder if that is true for everyone? Can you take a completely irresponsible non-team player, make him an officer, and magically turn him into a team player?

Does that also work in life? Could I take a total screwup kid and put him in charge of a company and thereby make him a more responsible person?

I'm not sure that is true, at least not in the extreme. Certainly some people would take that challenge and excel, but I have a feeling more of those companies would sink than the norm.

It would be interesting to see if it worked in WoW. Take the most screwed up person you can think of and put them in charge of running a few raids. Would they rise to the challenge and start to look at the game from a new lens? Would it lead to an increased feeling of a 'team' atmosphere? Would a loot whore turn over a new leaf if given that opportunity?

Or would the raid he led just be the worst experience ever? I guess the risk of worst case would mean I couldn't it just to conduct an experiment. I couldn't do it to the team. I guess that makes me a team player. Or something.

Musings on search engines

So as a part of my new job situation, I currently have a vested interest in the search engine wars. Which, comes as some surprise to me considering my history with search engines.

Back in 1999 I had one search engine that I used. Infoseek. Period. I never really had any desire to check out a new one. Infoseek was the tool I used because I could use 'advanced' search criteria on it. If I wanted to search for apple pie, but not get any page that had mention of cherry pie, it was very simple to do.

I never cared for Yahoo, the completely dominant player at the time, because it's information was dated. Because they used humans to sort through links they would display, the information could sometimes be months out of date and sometimes inaccurate (humans it seems, make mistakes. Weird.)

Then, in about October of 2000, I came across a new search engine (well, new to me anyway)...Google. It took some time to adjust, but it won me over with one new concept that absolutely blew me away....relevance.

Where it took me 4-5 pages of sorting to find what I was looking for, in google...I found it in 1-2. It greatly decreased the time it took me to find things. In less than a month, I was using only Google and I removed infoseek from my bookmarks.

Since I made the switch, Google has only improved. These days I consider myself an expert in searching for information on the internet. When I do a search, 99% of the time not only is the thing I'm looking for on the first page, it is generally the #1 or #2 hit.

So...how does a new search engine *win* against google? Lets say you work for a company that wanted to compete. How could they do so?

Here is my list:
* Provide a method that simplifies search even more and saves time.
As I said, I consider myself somewhat an expert in search. To win against Google, you need to provide a method whereby somebody who is not an expert in search can get my same performance out of the search engine.

How? I have a few thoughts:
- Contextual searching.
Not one search bar for everything. That has been done. Give me a link to say 'I want technical support' (or something), and have a form to fill out that includes "Put error message here". That way, when a user puts an error message in that field, they don't have to enclose it in quotes and commonly used conjunctions or other small words are not ignored.

Also, you could have a 'shopping' form that allows you to input shopping related searching. Same for searching for videos, music, travel, and weather information. Whatever.

-Cater to the geeks first
Look, I know the highlight is the consumer, but broad consumer adoption just isn't going to happen until you win over the geeks. My non-geek friends are going to look to their geek friends to figure out what search engine to use. A 30 second TV spot will get them to check out the site, but is it going to make them change their bookmarks? A consumer isn't going to dig into the nuts and bolts and figure out why this is such a great new search engine. A geek will, and then will distill the new features to their non-geek friends that is RELEVANT to their interests.

I'm not going to tell my wife every reason the iphone is cool. I'm going to tell her cool things she will use on the iphone. Win the geeks, and the non-geeks will follow.

- Emphasis on how you are better. Not different. Better.
Microsoft has this commercial on how Bing is a 'decision' engine. What does that mean? I realize it is hard to get anything across in a 30 second TV spot, but learn from your Windows 7 commercials! Show me what your search engine DOES. The Windows 7 commercials are brilliant. They show me a new feature of Windows 7, wrap in a little cheesy humor (the reenactment's being played by a really buff guy, while the guy talking is kinda overweight...awesome. :P), and then they lay the stupid marketing 'catch phrase' on me "I'm a PC and Windows 7 was my idea"...or whatever.

Anyway, those commercials are pretty effective. If I like the feature, I might give Windows 7 a whirl because of that commercial..since I have to pay for it, it might be a small chance, but it would weigh into my decision for sure. For a search engine that COSTS ME NOTHING, if I liked a feature I saw on TV, there is an absolute 100 percent chance I would try it.

Calling it a 'decision engine' doesn't make me want to try it because I have no bloody clue what that means. I have no particular problem with Bing, but their marketing is ridiculous. Anyway, where was I? I got a little sidetracked there.

Here is the point: If you want to be the player that makes a dent in Google's market share:
Do something better than Google.
Make sure the geeks know about how your feature is better.
Show your awesome new feature off in your advertising.

Easy right? Well...problem is that Google does the whole search thing really well. It is going to be pretty difficult to do it better.

BTW: Good search engine ad: http://www.youtube.com/searchstories?x=R31ge09jaXw