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TiVo’s Big Announcement Is…WebTV?

By Chief Oddball on March 4th, 2010 at 3:10 pm

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Last month, TiVo teased us with an upcoming announcement, saying that their inventing the DVR was just the opening act, or some such puffery. This week they finally revealed the meat and potatoes: it’s the all-new TiVo Premiere, otherwise known to us old hats as the Series4.

The big news about this box, to me, is the fact that the long-familiar TiVo user interface has been completely redesigned using Flash, of all things. It now runs in full HD resolution, unlike the existing UI which is 480p only. It also adds a “picture in picture” view of the channel you’re watching in the upper right corner like most cable company DVRs, an oft-requested feature. But the central point of the TiVo Premiere’s release, if you believe all of the TiVo marketing speak, seems to be the fact that it’s a “single box solution” for all of your video needs, including streaming video from Netflix and Amazon as well as web video from YouTube and what-have-you.

Personally, I found this announcement strange, because my TiVo HD already does all of those things. I’ve long been able to watch Amazon video on demand, although I never do because of the cost. I’ve long been able to watch YouTube, although I never do because, trust me, most YouTube videos look like total shit when they’re blown up to 1920×1080 on a 57-inch screen. I’ve even been able to stream Netflix Instant Queue titles to my TiVo, although I never do because the interface is poor and the performance is far inferior to the streaming on either my Xbox 360 or PlayStation 3 (the latter of which is currently my Netflix streaming device of choice).

So it was hard to see the TiVo Premiere’s apparent raison d’être as anything but a new skin on a feature set that’s already been there for months or even years. If I were to get really derogatory, it’s almost like the TiVo Premiere is the next generation of Microsoft’s WebTV — a set-top device designed to as an alternative to a computer that allowed people to browse the web on their TVs, albeit at standard-def resolutions (a miserable experience) and without the features of most PC-based web browsers.

Now, realistically, TiVo is known for their great UIs, and from what I can see of the new UI in action, the Premiere UI looks to be no exception. Still, as a current two-TiVo owner and lifetime subscriber, I can’t help but feel a little underwhelmed — my current TiVo seems to be at least as capable as the Premiere when it comes to being a “single-box solution” for getting content on your TV. And, as one commenter on Engadget remarked, how can the TiVo Premiere be a “single-box solution” if it doesn’t play Blu-ray discs and DVDs?

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Star Trek Online: Latest Screenshots

By Chief Oddball on February 28th, 2010 at 12:25 am

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I last posted about the massively multiplayer PC game Star Trek Online during the open beta phase. The game hit retail release in early February, and now that it’s been several weeks since then, what’s the current state of the game? Am I still playing?

In fact, today was the first time I logged onto Star Trek Online in almost two weeks. I have Mass Effect to thank for this — as much as I love all things Trek, Mass Effect is simply a far superior sci-fi RPG in every conceivable way. But I like to bounce back and forth between my hobbies (and obsessions!), and because today was a Star Trek day in every other regard (hint hint), I decided to change things up and take a seat at the helm of my Constitution-class starship once more.

Star Trek Online has been steadily improving over time, and a number of the more irritating bugs have been fixed since I last ventured out into the Alpha Quadrant. Notably, my ship’s bridge officers are finally allowed to wear the custom Next Generation style uniforms that came with my Collector’s Edition of the game, so now we all look pretty spiffy as we tool around on those away missions. (Also, if you have the TOS-style uniforms, the “Roddenberry Special” miniskirts are now available to your female officers, for which I’m sure they’ll, ah, thank you.) There has also been a litany of gameplay enhancements, new missions, new ship designs and other errata that are detailed in much depth on the STO website. If you hate the lack of content on the Klingon side or have a beef with the overall gameplay mechanics, you’re going to continue to be disappointed — probably forever. But there it’s clear that Cryptic does keep improving and evolving the game as we go.

I’m still a lowly Lieutenant Grade 6, which essentially means I haven’t amounted to a hill of beans in the STO universe. Unlike two weeks ago, now I find myself surrounded by huge Galaxy and Sovereign-class ships as I fly through sector space, a grim reminder of the fact that tons of other players have leveled way, way past me while I was busy recruiting the galaxy’s best and brightest for Commander Shepard’s suicide mission. (Hey, the Normandy ain’t gonna fly herself, no matter what EDI might tell you. I make no apologies.)

While I haven’t yet spent enough time to offer a more in-depth review of the new content and the other enhancements that lurk just beneath the surface, I did take a bunch of screenshots that might give you a glimpse into the exciting and ever-changing world of Star Trek Online. If you have a soft spot for the original Enterprise as I do, some of these shots may be a real feast your eyes.

U.S.S. Songkhla (NCC-104750-A)

Tugboat Duty: Towing a Wrecked Freighter

Entering Standard Orbit While Deftly Avoiding the Asteroids

Ensign Sansanee and Captain Harvie on the Bridge

Not Exactly an Ideal Vacation Spot

The Constitution-Class Ship's Unique Blue Phasers

Sansanee, More Interested in a Tribble than the Mission

Ready to Repel the Klingon Invasion of Vulcan

It's Drive-In Movie Time at Starbase One!

My Recreation of a Classic TOS Orbit Shot

Second Star to the Right, and Straight On Till Morning

Lending a Hand to a Disabled Crewman

If It's Borg, Shoot It!

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Review: Star Trek: The Original Series (Blu-Ray)

By Chief Oddball on February 27th, 2010 at 11:13 pm

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Star Trek TOS Season 3 Blu-Ray Set

For my birthday this year, my friends Pooch and Reaper gifted me with the Season 1 and 3 boxed sets of Star Trek: The Original Series on Blu-ray disc. Since this series (hereinafter referred to as TOS) was perhaps my first television love, and sparked an obsessive fanaticism which hasn’t waned for a minute since, I thought it appropriate to post my impressions of these all-new, high-definition episodes. They are, after all, the most significant reissue of TOS yet.

Since the moment the final episode aired in 1969, the original Star Trek became one of those iconic shows that has seen release on just about every media format ever conceived by man. Over the years, I’ve owned episodes on Betamax, VHS and DVD, each release getting progressively better — the VHS tapes added preview trailers, the initial DVD releases added remastered picture and sound, etc. The Blu-ray discs, however, add more than any of the others, for they contain the remastered episodes with all-new effects shots created by CBS Digital and rendered in high definition. This enhanced version of TOS has, amongst Trek fandom, become known as TOS-R.

What CBS has done here is monumental. Almost every effects shot in the series — ship flybys, phaser combat, etc. — has been reproduced digitally. This effort was apparently sparked by the format of the original effects composites, which were apparently low-resolution and could not be scaled up to high definition without massive quality loss. CBS’s solution was to recreate the effects entirely, and what we end up with are some (mostly) pretty impressive renders that add a whole new level of depth. Every time you see the Enterprise on screen, it’s like seeing her with a totally new set of eyes. Even several minor composite shots have been replaced, like some of the hand phaser effects and what-not.

The Blu-ray discs bring to life not only the new effects shots, but the old tried-and-true footage of Kirk, Spock, McCoy and the rest of the gang as well. TOS has never looked better — or sounded better, either, thanks to the new 7.1 surround sound mix. While watching the episode “Wink of an Eye” on the big screen earlier tonight, I was stunned by the level of detail that’s visible. At times, this even had the effect of cluing me into the crummy paint jobs and slapdash construction of the set pieces, which made me chuckle because I’ve never noticed them despite years and years of watching this same footage over and over.

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Quick, Act Like We Give a Crap

By Chief Oddball on February 24th, 2010 at 10:08 pm

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Today the president of Toyota Motor Company, Mr. Akio Toyoda, appeared before a U.S. congressional committee to answer questions about the ongoing recall and safety/PR crisis that his company is currently suffering. My wife watched the proceedings on live TV, and as she put it, the result could only be described as “a serious culture crash.” Like a runaway Camry stuck at WOT, Mr. Toyoda ran headfirst into the unbelievable arrogance of the American government.

I will be the first to admit that I have a massive case of schadenfreude against Toyota. Over the last decade this company has proven that they aren’t infallible after all; that they are capable of the same greed-fueled mistakes and inestimable stupidity that, at one time or another, plagues almost every car company — even great ones like BMW or Mercedes-Benz. Yet the media has been blind to the slowly mounting quality concerns of Toyota vehicles, always holding them up as the good guys while demonizing the domestic automakers in the same breath. A common refrain is how much more concerned Toyota is about fuel efficiency, which is a patent falsehood betrayed by the wide swath of SUVs and trucks they sell, many of which get inferior mileage to their domestic competition. Worst of all are those hacks at Consumer Reports, who until recently were giving every new Toyota model an automatic recommendation, sight unseen, simply because of the company’s past reputation.

I guess it’s always 1989 in Consumer Reports land, because these same hacks would always turn right around and lambaste the domestic automakers for continuing to churn out crap, even when that so-called “crap” was comprised of legitimately competitive products like the current Ford Fusion or Chevy Malibu. A huge crisis of credibility has been going on in the auto journalism of this nation for so many years, I’ve almost gotten to the point where I avoid auto news on principle.

Indeed, for the last several years now, I’ve despised and avoided two things: Toyota Motor Company, and the U.S. Congress. There’s Toyota, trying to paint themselves as the self-appointed “great American car company” and our benevolent “green savior” while all the while they’re just another corporation cutting corners and stepping on toes wherever they can to get to the top as fast as possible, for little more than bragging rights. And then there’s the U.S. Congress, filled with people with so much more money than sense that it’s a wonder the House and Senate don’t collapse inwards on themselves in a vacuous singularity of wanton ignorance. Our senators and representatives are such unbridled egomaniacs that they all fancy themselves the babysitters of the entire American public who could not possibly know what’s good for them — yet, by and large, they accomplish nothing, have little-to-no private sector experience and would probably fail miserably if forced to deal with a working man’s pressures without all their perks and hired help. Today’s headlines, for example, brought news that Congress’ approval rating has dropped to a record-breaking 10%.

Now imagine these two forces — Congress and Toyota — coming together. Peter DeLorenzo of AutoExtremist predicted the results weeks ago: An embarrassment of epic proportions. Peter, no fan of Toyota himself (his book, “The United States of Toyota”, helps explain why), urged Mr. Toyoda not to accept the U.S.’s invitation to personally attend his company’s hearings — for the bloviators on the hill would only turn it into an embarrassment and further fuel the PR nightmare. After all, look at how the Big 3 bailout hearings were handled: as little more than an opportunity for our CongressCritters to beat up on auto executives, treat them like little babies and then argue (in the Republicans’ case) that they deserved no government support, when those same Republicans were already supporting the likes of Toyota to the tune of millions of dollars in tax credits in their home constituencies.

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Thoughts on Being Thirty

By Chief Oddball on February 23rd, 2010 at 11:22 pm

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At 6:43 p.m. this evening I officially turned thirty. For the last few days — weeks, even — I haven’t known exactly how to feel. Mostly I wasn’t even thinking about my upcoming milestone birthday; I’ve been too preoccupied with how wholly dissatisfying and depressing life seems to have been of late. My wife and I have dealt with a lot of stress: career issues, medical issues, and some that have been a combination of both. This has been going on for months, and is largely responsible for the dearth of posts on this site. On any given day, after I finally get done with work and chores for the day, I don’t want to think about doing much more than playing video games or reading.

I feel like things started taking a turn for the better today, though. It seems odd to say that now, because the first half of the day was filled with little stresses that really got under my skin: incompetence at work; awful seasonal traffic filled with bad drivers making dumb decisions; my doctor treating me like my time wasn’t valuable by making me late for a meeting while he carried on a conversation with his next patient during my appointment time. After that, though, things got a lot better — thanks in part to my wife and family, and thanks in part to my simply freeing my mind, taking charge of things and declaring, “Fuck it.”

I had an impromptu meeting (which I was late for, as I mentioned) at work, during which I received another massive assignment that came out of nowhere as they always do, to design all the user interfaces for a new web app that’s going to do project management, customer management, task management, time tracking, employee management, support queueing and just about everything else. At its conclusion, I pretty much said, “Bye, fragsters.” I hung up the phone, logged off the computer and went to Gamestop. Yeah, no shit.

My wife bought me Heavy Rain (the new PS3 game) and more Microsoft points. We picked up my parents, who are here in town, and went to Carrabba’s for dinner. After a good meal we came back home for some birthday cake, and queued up the Office Space DVD for a few laughs (we’d been quoting it in the car all the way home). It was a great time, and a great way to kick off the next decade of my life. For the first time in a while, I felt like I actually have something to look forward to as that next decade marches on.

I’ve always allowed myself to be taken advantage of to some degree, and I’m about tired of it. If I could make one personal resolution as I enter my thirties, it’s to stop being such a goddamn pushover. Or, if I absolutely must accept being pushed around, to have the balls to push back when it’s strategically advantageous. My company has really put the screws to me over my health care, and since Christmas it’s been one stress after another, more and more bills, confusion and red tape — all so they could save their W-2 employees a few dollars a month while I lose my coverage entirely. For the month of February I’ve paid for two insurance companies at once while my employer drags me through this transition, and most of it I don’t really expect to get back. How bad do you think I feel about “cutting class” early today so I could do something for my own birthday? Not a damn bit, frankly.

I am, however, going to go into my work tomorrow with a clear head, with a renewed focus and energy on my tasks. I finally feel like I’m breaking through into a place where I can actually care about my work again, in a way that I haven’t been able to for weeks upon weeks. At the same time, I’m going to remember that that in this world, no one gets ahead without taking advantage. If you play the nice guy every day, you’re not going anywhere. You just have to know when the right time is to unleash your inner “bad guy.”

So, while I go forward into my thirties with the aforementioned in mind, what else have I got in store for my week? Well, when I’m here at home — this doesn’t apply in Thailand, where I don’t have full control over my activities — I like to bring a little slice of birthday celebration to every day of my birth week. A nice meal, a slice of cake, a marathon session of gaming, a favorite Star Trek episode, or whatever else suits my fancy.

On the gaming front, there’s plenty for me to do. I’m still going through Mass Effect 2, which is easily the most amazing game I’ve played in 2010 — and which I feel will be a Game Of The Year contender, even knowing the kinds of titles that are yet to release this year. It’s the perfect blend of adventure, role-playing and shooting, all tied together by a well-written story with a cast of excellent characters voiced by some real powerhouse talent. If you even remotely like sci-fi space opera, Mass Effect 2 is unquestionably a game you must play.

There’s also Heavy Rain, a PS3 exclusive that I just picked up today (thanks honey!). This is a different type of game — a sort of interactive narrative that makes you feel like you’re playing a movie. Admittedly, there could be limited appeal with such an approach, leaving players to grow bored or complain that they’re not playing so much as watching. But the free demo I tried was actually quite engaging, and despite the fairly wonky controls, I decided it was worth a purchase. I like these “interactive story” type games, and felt like rewarding and supporting the developer rather than saving it for the bargain bin or the rental store.

I almost picked up BioShock 2 today as well, but had to be realistic: I wouldn’t be playing it for weeks to come. I’ve still got Mass Effect to get through, and then — although I am embarrassed to admit it — I still need to finish the original BioShock! It was a game that I got about halfway through before putting it aside thanks to a tidal wave of amazing games that all landed at the same time, and the fact that I missed the first three weeks of the game’s launch due to my Xbox failure. Once I get ready to play the sequel, I may frankly pick it up used. To be honest, I never thought of BioShock as a game that needed a sequel — but I hear that, as a sequel, it’s actually quite good.

As an outro, I’d like this post to serve as a the first in a new line of posts that return to my original theme — commentary on news items, reviews of movies and games, and general gabbery about work, music, life, and whatever else I may be into at the moment. I’ve really let this place go, because in a way I think I really let myself go, emotionally at least. With so much to talk about in the news now that personally interests me, and with my goal to set foot on a new path, now seems like the perfect time to get back to that. Starting tomorrow, I hope, that will come to fruition. Stay tuned.

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Paradoxes

By Chief Oddball on February 17th, 2010 at 12:01 am

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I haven’t really been sure what to think these past few days, as I’ve approached my thirtieth birthday. I’ve had a particularly hard time just facing the average workday recently, feeling as though my efforts are largely boring and devoid of purpose. On the other hand, I’ve also found creative solace in a number of personal projects of varying degrees. In these business and personal pursuits alike, I’ve had hit-or-miss success — one minute cranking out marketing documents with reckless abandon, and the next minute unable to even finish a paragraph. Quite paradoxical.

In the end, I have to admit that these last few endlessly contradictory days have had nothing at all to do with the “milestone” birthday I’m about to celebrate next week; undoubtedly neither my body nor my mind gives a damn about such minutiae. These phases come and go; there are always times now and again when I just can’t seem to muster the will to care about anything.

To that end, I’ve been spending the meantime simply going wherever my mind wishes to go. As if to prove that turning thirty hasn’t changed the things that are important to me, my most recent personal project has involved going back to the stories I wrote between 1987 and 1995, on an old DOS-based word processor called First Choice. Since 64-bit operating systems are becoming the norm, and 16-bit code (like DOS apps) can’t be executed natively on them, I decided suddenly that it was time to convert the whole kit ‘n’ kaboodle to a more modern format, like Word or RTF or something.

So I’ve been going back to the classics, the ancient dreck I wrote between the ages of seven and fifteen. This, too, has been a contradictory experience: So much of what I wrote back then was utterly horrible, and yet there are gems that still make me smile when I read them, wondering how they’ve managed to hold up for so many years. The conversion process itself is essentially manual (what few utilities exist don’t do a competent enough job to be worthwhile), and far more arduous than I expected, but I’ve already converted some 50-60 stories and have put them all on my iPhone for reading whenever the mood strikes.

Meanwhile, some other changes are also afoot, changes which I hope will make life a little more interesting. One of my bosses (the one who’s also a friend) and his family are likely going to move back to Florida, to this very area in fact. Not only will it be great, personally, for both my wife and I to have more friends to hang out with, but having one of the owners of this company back in my neck of the woods can only strengthen my position here. Lately I’ve been feeling marginalized and neglected as the sole remaining employee left in Florida, and perhaps having one of the Big Bosses™ in my corner will help.

I had hoped to write more than this, but the paradoxical phase I’m in doesn’t seem to be over yet. Despite having a variety of ideas with which I wanted to infuse this post, I could never figure out how to put them into words. (Having the Olympics on in the background hasn’t helped my concentration.) This entry will have to stand as-is, perhaps as little more than a reminder that yes, I’m still here. Even if I don’t feel compelled to post much of late.

It’s going to be a busy weekend, with the Asian Festival taking place at the Mercato, my parents coming into town and the possibility that I might see Shutter Island, a movie that I’ve been wanting to watch since I put down the book upon which it’s based. With all of that going on, maybe I’ll have something to post here again soon. Stranger things have happened.

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Reconnecting

By Chief Oddball on February 3rd, 2010 at 8:23 pm

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I’ve been sort of shut-in lately…which is saying something, given that I work from home and already spend 99% of my time inside my house on any given day. After getting a cold early last week, even my daily walks ceased (the weather was cold and rainy too, by Florida standards). Then I transmitted my cold to Apple, and by Thursday and Friday we were both cooped up at home, sniffling and sneezing together.

Come Sunday, I hadn’t ventured outside for any Vitamin D or O2 in nearly a week — so it was fortuitous that Apple’s Thai friend Lek gave her a call and asked if we wanted to come to her house for an impromptu dinner get-together. Even Apple’s warnings about having a cold didn’t faze Lek, who brashly replied that she wasn’t afraid of it. Besides, she added, she had already invited another friend who had a cold as well, so there was no point in bailing out. I had essentially recovered fully by then, and Apple was longing for some of Lek’s home-cooked Thai food to unblock her sinuses, so we decided to go.

If I’m being honest, at first I didn’t know what to think of the idea. It’s not that I didn’t want to go out, eat dinner at a friend’s house and see other people — I just don’t take well to spur-of-the-moment activities. I like to have everything planned, like to know when I can expect to have the evening to myself and when I can expect to go out and do stuff. I had also just finished a truly rotten (read: ricockulously busy) week at the office and was looking at starting an even busier one on Monday, and part of me wanted to just play video games and vegetate all night. But an even larger part of me yearned to get the hell out of the house and interact with other humans, so I agreed to go.

I’m so glad I did, for we had a great time. As is always the case when you visit Lek’s house, lots of friends show up whom you haven’t seen in ages (and some whom you’ve never even met). We had an excellent meal filled with a variety of home-cooked dishes, including papaya salad, larb, tom yum and even teriyaki chicken. After dinner, while the gaggle of Thai girls hung out together, laughing and joking and telling stories, the husbands and boyfriends swapped their own stories about Thailand and the things we had encountered during our travels there.

Feeling like I was actually a knowledgeable authority on a subject other than that of video games, web development or cars was different for me — and refreshing. We talked about the places we’ve been, the food we’ve eaten and the exotic fruits native to Thailand, and I found myself likewise sharing a lot of stories with Lek’s husband. At one point he presented us with what he called “magic fruit”: Tiny little red fruits that, once you ate them, had the amazing effect of converting all sour and bitter flavors into sweet flavors. To demonstrate, he asked us each to eat a magic fruit and then suck on a slice of fresh lime. Much to everyone’s surprise, the lime tasted like sugar candy. It really was incredible. (And potentially quite useful.)

Sunday’s outing was such a good time that Apple and I have vowed to get out of the house more often for similar activities. Lek has a big karaoke party scheduled for late February that we’ll be going to (I won’t be singing, though…I do have my limits), and tomorrow we’re going to meet her and her husband at a highly-recommended new Thai restaurant where Lek works a couple days per week. I hear tell that I might be invited to develop a simple website for them in exchange for something tasty, like a whole bunch of free Thai food and sushi. I can get on board with that.

So here’s to getting out more, and hanging out with these folks again soon.

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Impressions: Star Trek Online (Open Beta)

By Chief Oddball on January 23rd, 2010 at 12:27 am

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Visiting strange new worlds

Star Trek and video games. Like many geeks, they’re two of my first loves, forged in my early years when bright colors and awe-inspiring, imagination-stoking stories were all I needed to be truly happy. So it should be no surprise that every time these two elements come together, I sit up and take notice. Usually I find myself underwhelmed, but today I’m positively aglow. And you, dear reader, whether you like it or not, are about to discover why.

For the past week, I’ve been participating in the open beta test of Star Trek Online, the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) from Cryptic Studios, makers of Champions Online and City of Heroes. If those titles don’t exactly inspire confidence, you’re not alone. Maybe, being a hardcore Trekker, I’m more forgiving than most — but it’s my opinion that Cryptic has created something amazing in Star Trek Online, something the cosmos has badly needed for a good number of years: a decent Star Trek video game.

In fact, STO is more than mere decency would imply. In the short couple of weeks since the beta began, I’ve watched it evolve from a rough, buggy and somewhat small-feeling universe to a huge, open-universe game with real polish and real potential — even with the bugs that remain to be fixed. Every Star Trek fan’s dream, whether you like the classic original series, the iconic adventures of Picard’s Enterprise or the dark days of the Dominion War, is represented faithfully by at least one slice of Star Trek Online. It’s enough to make a grown man imitate phaser sound effects while flying his very own replica of the Enterprise about the galaxy.

Because it’s an MMORPG, Star Trek Online is different than your average singleplayer-centric game. It’s a huge open world, a persistent virtual universe that’s constantly running on a farm of servers 24/7, changing and evolving whether you’re part of it or not. You share this game world with all of the other players, who are exploring space, getting into battles and engaging in commerce at the same time you are. Although there aren’t as many opportunities for you to actually play with others as there are in most MMOs, there are still lots of ways to team up and tackle missions, attack the enemy and defend Federation starbases with tons of other people from around the world.

Being a somewhat anti-social person, I’ve never had a real hankering to play popular MMOs like World of Warcraft or EVE Online; usually I would rather explore a game’s virtual universe my myself. Additionally, I was never really a fan of the fantasy setting (dragons, orcs, wizards and so forth) on which most MMOs are based. Star Trek Online therefore presents a unique opportunity for me to enter the world of MMORPGs on my own terms, using a setting both familiar and welcome. And the fact that solo play seems to be rather commonplace — even hard to avoid — in STO only made it easier for me to give it a try.

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Finally Found the Mercato Car Cruise

By Chief Oddball on January 16th, 2010 at 8:40 pm ··· Leave a Comment

The Mercato Holiday Car Cruise that was canceled back in mid-December on account of poor weather was finally rescheduled, I guess, because I showed up at the Mercato tonight to pick up a sandwich and it was in full swing. Unfortunately we were already starting to lose the daylight, but I grabbed a few pics with my iPhone. There was a staggering amount of exotics in attendance; the pictures barely do them justice.

See them all in this gallery on Flickr. (Or you could just go to my photos page.)


Work/Play

By Chief Oddball on January 16th, 2010 at 4:32 pm

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Local headline: Woman crashes BMW into photo shop while attempting to park.

Well…welcome to winter in Florida. The fact that we’re having our busiest “snowbird season” in two or three years must be a bittersweet pill to swallow for the owner of that Fifth Avenue photo shop, who says this is the third time in 16 years that a car has driven through his front window. Oh well, perhaps the additional business this year will help him pay his undoubtedly increasing insurance premiums.

Anyway, I would also be remiss if I didn’t welcome you officially to Oddball Update 2010. Contrary to recent evidence, this blog has not fallen under new management. I’ve simply been too preoccupied with not doing anything constructive to give much of a crap about posting anything. In truth, the holidays this past year were rather hit-and-miss. The last two weeks of December were an emotional roller coaster of good and bad, hair-pulling frustration and classic good times. It was hard to know which you were going to get when you woke up in the morning.

Things have settled down a bit in the past week or two, but the “head in the sand” mode into which I regressed during the holidays is still here. I work every day ’till six or six-thirty, take a brisk walk for my daily exercise and fresh air, and play some enjoyable video games in the evening before kicking back with Apple for some chatting, gossiping or giggling like schoolchildren before bed. The routine hasn’t varied much, if at all, in a month. It’s quite comforting, really, like your grandmother’s fresh-baked strawberry pie or a nice hot bowl of soup on a cold day.

Unfortunately, this routine hasn’t been very conducive to creative pursuits, such as writing, designing, recording or any of the other constructive tomfoolery I like to get up to from time to time. Even so, I’m trying to move beyond caring about such matters. Somewhere after I got out of high school and into a job where I actually had to (and wanted to) care about what I was spending my time doing, I started getting very sensitive about how my hours were spent. I’d get all guilt-wracked if I felt like I hadn’t “accomplished something” or “done something constructive” even during my off hours. So on those nights when I’d just feel like playing a game, watching a movie or reading a book, I’d go to bed feeling like I wasted the evening.

Not anymore, really. I’m eating it up. Give me three hours to explore the wasteland in Fallout 3, or explore the galaxy in Star Trek Online (which I’ll talk more about some other time). I’ll go to bed happy. Usually much happier than I was before I started playing, when I’d just gotten off work for the day. In fact, during the holidays I was pretty damn surly just about every weekday, at least until the sun set.

For a time, there, I really felt like the guys at work were trying to screw me. Not really on purpose; I had no illusions about them deliberately designing a conspiracy against me or anything grandiose like that. I just felt marginalized, like it was easy for them to make choices that ended up screwing me because I’m out of sight and out of mind down here in Florida, whereas the rest of the crew is in another part of the country (or the world, in some cases). See, when I was first asked to sign on with this firm, I was part of a small Florida satellite office that no longer exists today. Or, more to the point, I’m the last remaining member of its former ranks.

It all started just days before Christmas, when the company admins decided they wanted to switch our health insurance group plan to a new vendor by the first of the year, in order to save everybody some money on premiums. Unfortunately, since I work out of a different state and am thus a 1099 contractor (so the company doesn’t have to play by Florida’s rules), the new heath insurer decided I wasn’t going to qualify because they don’t like contractors. So this touched off an immediate scramble where I and the human resources coordinator tried to put together a solution that would allow Apple and I to retain coverage. Given that we’re still trying to get pregnant right now, the possibility of losing health coverage was not something I wanted to hear.

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