Learning to play guitar

For about the last month now i've been "playing" Rocksmith on the 360. It's a "game" where you plug in a real electric guitar to the 360 and play real rock songs.

It has been an incredible learning tool and definitely one to study if you're looking to do e-learning right.

As of a month in I'm playing 5 or 6 songs at nearly 100% of the guitar part. Last night I played one song in "master mode" which means I played the entire song by memory, and I managed to hit 96% of the notes...not bad for one month of lessons.

Happy 2012!

Danielle has this theory that our lives are a lot like the Star Trek films. Even numbered films are great, while odd numbered films…could best be forgotten. Looking back over the past 10 years or so, I’d have to say she may be onto something.

The good news is we managed to make it through 2011. Which, for those mathematically challenged, is an odd numbered year. It definitely had it’s share of things to be forgotten. Let’s see, we were robbed, we had mass lay offs at work, combined with no raise, combined with a rather large furlough for the latter half of the year…and those are just the high points.

However it wasn’t all bad. We did have our second great Disney trip and that in itself had too many highlights to fit into this post. And, well, with the economy being the way it is, I guess you could count the fact that I still have a job as a good thing.

Definite good news is the fact that things are really looking up at work.

In any case. I’m more than thrilled to be kicking off an even numbered year. The good news has already started with the announcement that our paychecks are indeed returning to their unfurloughed state and we’ve had a few big projects sign just in time for the new year.

So bring on 2012. I’m more than ready. 

Once Upon a Time, in a galaxy far, far away…

It was eight and a half years ago that I first logged into Star Wars Galaxies and created my first character Raelin Torthal. Raelin was an African-American in his early 50’s. He was  a crafter, a weaponsmith to be exact. Most people simply called him “Rae”.

Only a few months after Star Wars Galaxies (SWG) launched, I was laid-off from my job at Donruss. I’d never been laid-off before, and I’d never been without a job for more than 2 weeks since I was out of college, so at the time I wasn’t too worried about finding a new job.

But in 2003, I’d soon find out that it was hard to get a job, very hard. I spent almost a year looking for a job and trying to get at least an interview. I wasn’t very successful. I spent much of that year sitting at my computer playing SWG in between searching job postings and waiting for anyone to call.

All that time Rae didn’t have any trouble at all “finding a job” people were always wanting new weapons and Rae was always there to supply them. He didn’t do a lot of fighting, most days consisted of prospecting for chemicals and weapons, dropping down a harvester or two if anything popped up, and paying maintenance on harvesters that were already hard at work. After that he’d tend to his factories and visit the shop to see what had sold the previous day and what needed to be restocked.

Often people would drop by the store with a '”special” order or possibly a weapon to be repaired or replaced. This was the typical day-in-the-life of a master weaponsmith.

It wasn’t long before Rae joined a very active guild and settled down in their city. It was a huge city, very popular, very busy which meant there was now even more to be done.

Being unemployed for months on end, with hardly any interviews tends to make several feelings grow inside. Feelings of helplessness, feeling worthlessness, and commonly feelings of complete and total failure.

While some may argue if I had spent more time pounding the pavement and less time playing SWG maybe I could have found a job sooner. I disagree with that logic…with my skillset at the time and the job market at the time. In fact I think in some ways retreating to that virtual world, and taking on the persona of Rae actually helped me counter those feelings of failure, and worthlessness. In the world of SWG, I was needed, almost 24/7. I did interact with other people, many in the guild were in the same situation I was in jobwise. Often we would chat about upcoming job interviews and other affects of being unemployed.

As time passed, and I got to know these other individuals, we would go on adventures or hang out in the local in-game cantina. We would talk about our families, our holiday plans, and of course, then game. The point is, the conversations we had, the places we went became very ‘real’ to me. These were, after all, ‘real’ people. And the places were still ‘real’ locations they were even measured in longitude and latitude. The only difference is the places were in a computer server somewhere.

Looking back now, I think that Rae, and the world he was in, helped me get though one of the toughest times in my life. Which is why on Dec 15, a couple of days ago, I actually felt a very distinct ‘sadness’ when they turned off the SWG servers for the last time.

Even though I’d stopped playing SWG years ago, there was still that lingering bit of ‘real’ that I felt about Rae and his world. It’s a little like having a favorite vacation spot and then learning that it’s going away and you’ll never be able to visit it again.

So, I did what I think most people would do in that case. I visited the world one last time, took a bunch of photographs, visited some of my more memorable spots and wondered if I was going to be standing all alone when the lights went out. The server was a ghost town and I had only seen two or three people running around in the first half hour I was there. I hadn’t really spent any amount of time in the world in two or three years so it wasn’t a surprise that none of my old friends were online.

I decided to head over to the ‘party event’, a party with Jabba the Hutt and friends at the Sarlacc pit on Tattoine. Much to my surprise I had just gotten to the event when one of those old friends, Yod, sent me a message saying goodbye. We chatted briefly and he said he was headed to the party as well.

“Party” is a pretty loose term. There were 5 or 6 people at the “party”. Not long after Yod arrived at the party another friend “Aff” logged on. He soon joined us and the three of us, the three crafters from the guild and the city, watched as Tatooine’s twin suns rose in the East and the servers gave their final countdown.

And with the sunrise came the end. So I have to say “So long Rae. It was a heck of an adventure.”

Flight

An airplane needs speed to fly. Without speed, the wings can’t generate enough lift to overcome the force of gravity and the plane will never leave the ground. But you must be careful when flying, especially smaller single engine planes, that you don’t climb so fast, at such a steep angle that your mass outweighs the force of your engines and you stall out. Doing so would send your aircraft plummeting to the Earth.

It’s also important to note, in just such a case, that the thing to do…by the book…is the thing that instinctively makes the least amount of sense. The best thing to do, in the event of a stall, is to point the plane’s nose toward the ground. True, it sounds like this is the last thing you would want to do, basically you’re ensuring that you’re going to impact the ground all that much sooner. But the thought, the aerodynamic theory, is that in pointing your plane to the ground you’ll fall faster and generate just enough of that precious speed to once again give your plane the ability of flight.

Of course, all of this assumes you weren’t already too low to the ground when the stall began. And that you don’t wait too long to pull up. If either of these two scenarios occurs then it’s going to be an awfully bad day and one that no parachute is going to save you from.

Tiger Woods –The Masters

The last golf game I purchased was “Tiger Woods 06”, I can’t swear to it, but I don’t think I ever completed a full 18 holes. There were so many things bad about it I really can’t begin to list them all here.

Since then, I’ve rented or borrowed a couple of newer versions of the game, and really…not much improvement going on. But after reading several glowing reviews about Tiger Woods – The Masters, I decided to give a shot. The cheap way of course, I downloaded the demo.

To my surprise, it actually FELT like a pretty solid golf game…even if the demo was really way too short to get a full feel of the game. But since it’s a pretty historic moment that a company can get Augusta to license their course in a computer game I figured this may be my only chance to virtually play Augusta.

So I jumped in and bought the thing. Even paid full price, shocker.

I’m very happy to say, “Money well spent.”

It is a very solid golf game with a gorgeous presentation, and a plethora of game choices.

I’ll hold off on a long rambling game review and just go with “If you’ve ever enjoyed golf, and you’ve got a 360 I highly recommend picking it up. And soon, or you’ll miss out on one of the cooler features “Play With the Pros” where they pull in the current PGA golf tournament and you get to really feel the players pain while they try to play in 30 mph winds or face the glass greens of Augusta.

Tiger at the Masters

Tiger Woods is at the Masters again. Sure a lot of things have changed since his last win at Augusta, mainly the fact that a lot of his squeaky clean image was a big disguise. He may have had more mistresses than major tournament wins (which is saying a lot). But honestly, I'd really like to see the guy in one of those God awful green jackets one more time.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not condoning his extra-marital activities, but the truth is...I think golf, the sport, NEEDS him to win. When golf is at it's best, there's always a small, very small handful of people that play as superstars. From the days of Bobby Jones, to Sam Sneed, to Jack and Tom...and then..for a while golf lost it's iconic figures. It was anybody's tournament any given weekend. Sure there was a relatively core group that was likely to pop up in the top 10; people like Fred Couples, Greg Norman, Curtis Strange; but no one consistently really dominated the game like the earlier legends.

While that may sound like an ideal, "fair" situation it doesn't give anyone anything to "look forward too" for the next weekend. People WANT stars, especially in a game when 95% of the time the players are playing as individuals.

Then along comes Tiger Woods. A child prodigy. Someone that seemed born, made, destined to play golf. All eyes were on him as he dominated college and amateur tournaments shattering records all along the way. He really had all the pressure in the world on him from the very instant he turned pro, and he didn't disappoint.

From straight out of the gate he shot to the top of the leader boards, winning tournament after tournament. And with each win his legend began to grow. If Tiger was leading on Sunday morning everyone else was playing for second place. He could make a charge on Saturday from anywhere in the pack with an almost mythical quality. He didn't choke. He didn't make mistakes. When it came to golf, he was perfect.

Golf was fun to watch. No matter where things sat at the end of the day on Friday, everyone wanted to see when and how Tiger was going to make his charge this weekend. A good deal of this performances, and that's what they had become...performances, bordered on inhuman. It was amazing to watch.

But on November 27, 2009, (coincidentally my birthday), the whole world found out that when it came to life, he was far from perfect. He had a wife, and kids and had cheated, repeatedly, many, MANY times.

Jack Nicklaus once said, "Golf is 90% mental." If that statement was ever in question, all you have to do is take a brief look at what happened to Tiger's golf game post November 27. You'd think Tiger had had one or more of his arms or legs amputated when he crashed his Escalade into that tree. He couldn't manage to win a tournament. Even worse, for a while, he had trouble even finishing a tournament.

Golf's Hercules had had his hair cut. He was indeed very human after all.

But like I was saying, people want super stars. They need heroes and larger than life, inhuman characters.

In the movie "The Legend of Bagger Vance", Will Smith's character is talking with the protagonist of the movie, Randolph Juna. This is a character that supposedly played artful golf then was sent off to war where he lost the majority of his platoon in  battle. And went he returned from war, he had 'lost his swing'. Will Smith's advice to Mr. Juna could pretty much be taken straight to Tiger. "The Randolph Juna you was, you ain't ever gonna be. Ever....ever."  

So, like the fictional Juna, Tiger has to reinvent himself. The 10% physical part his golf game he's still got. He's just got to work on getting back more of the 90% that Jack talked about. And I hope he can do it, before it's too late. Sure, he's proved he's not perfect in a big way. But I miss the old Tiger. I enjoyed watching the old Tiger tear a golf course to shreds and embarrass a field of the world's best golfers, making them look like high school freshmen. At times, it was in a word...magical.

I'm a strong believer in magic and we could always use a little more of it in the world.

Not so handyman

Tried to fix the leaky shower. Spent all day and failed completely.