Virtual Vellum

Books Read in 2011

2011-12-31T06:00:00.000-05:00

For posterity's sake, it's nice to capture a list like this. Here are all the books I read this year, either to myself or to my family:

Dune Messiah (Frank Herbert) (approximately my 5th attempt to read the sequel books to the absolutely stupendous DUNE. As with the others, this attempt ended in pain, but not until the 4th book, which is farther than I'd ever gotten before).
Children of Dune (Frank Herbert)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief (Rick Riordan) (read to the whole family, complete with unique voices for each character)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: Sea of Monsters (Rick Riordan)
Kenpo Karate: The Law of the Fist and the Empty Hand (Ed Parker)
God Emperor of Dune (Frank Herbert) - it sucked
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Titan's Curse (Rick Riordan)
A Game of Thrones (George R. R. Martin) (a re-read, probably for the 5th or 6th time, in preparation for the release of A Dance with Dragons)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Battle of the Labyrinth (Rick Riordan)
A Clash of Kings (George R. R. Martin)
Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Last Olympian (Rick Riordan)
The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins) (As with Percy Jackson, this was read to the whole family, mostly out on our deck in the warm summer evenings, complete with character voices)
A Storm of Swords (George R. R. Martin)
Catching Fire (Suzanne Collins)
Mockingjay (Suzanne Collins)
A Feast for Crows (George R. R. Martin) - read twice
A Dance with Dragons (George R. R. Martin)
Japanese Swordsmanship: Technique And Practice (Gordon Warner & Donn F. Draeger)
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (J. K. Rowling) (as with Percy Jackson and The Hunger Games, this was read to the family with a plethora of character voices, all with as close as I can manage to a British accent)
Armor (John Steakley) (read almost entirely while sitting at the State Fair, saving seats for my daughter at the Big Time Rush concert)
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (J. K. Rowling)
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (J. K. Rowling)
The Fall (Guillermo del Toro & Chuck Hogan)
I, Robot (Isaac Asimov)
The Passage (Justin Cronin)
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (J. K. Rowling)
Ed Parker's Infinite Insights into Kenpo Vol1 (Ed Parker)
Semper Mars (Ian Douglas)

One Day

2011-11-11T11:11:00.001-05:00

Even though I'm not actively using my blog at the moment, I simply couldn't resist making a post today. It's November 11th, 2011. Also known as 11-11-11. And I'm timing this post to be at precisely 11:11 AM (I'll try to press "publish" at exactly 11 seconds in).

Sadly, I probably won't live to see February 22nd, 2222 at 2:22.22 AM. That'll be cool, too. But through the miracle of modern medicine, maybe I'll make it to November 11th, 2111. Or one of my clones will.

Rolling Up the Scroll

2011-08-19T06:00:00.000-04:00

If you're reading this, there's a pretty good chance that you're my mom. Hi Mom.

Kidding aside, I haven't updated Virtual Vellum in quite some time, and at this point I'm planning to go on a long-term hiatus. I don't imagine that this will upset too many people, because so far as I could tell very few people ever read this blog. That's my fault, of course - if it were better, it would have soared to great heights.

Part of it, though, was also the unfocused nature of this blog. I have a lot of interests, but I'm not expert enough or knowledgeable enough about any of them to write 3-5 blog entries a week. The result is that anyone who shares one of my interests would have to slog through lots of posts on things that didn't interest them at all - my family, my writing, the guitar, martial arts, business, renaissance faires, politics, or whatever other nonsense I'd decided to write about. I would certainly find this deeply unsatisfying, and I've stopped reading blogs myself for the exact same reason.

This is all John Scalzi's fault, really. I read one of his books about writing, and part of his advice was that all new writers should harness the power of social media. It had worked well for him, after all. Well, yeah, but not necessarily in a way that would work for others. Scalzi got a big boost by being a writer for AOL, gaining regular followers that way. When he expanded onto the real Internet, that surely gave him a boost. Starting from scratch is hard, and I wasn't successful at it. Plus, I've since heard from other authors that having a devoted internet following can actually be a liability when dealing with publishers, as they may (and sometimes have) take the position that since you already have a loyal following, they don't need to invest money or effort in marketing your work.

And I won't lie - it's pretty disheartening to check your numbers and see that the same 20 or 30 people (tops) who were reading your blog a year ago are the same ones still reading it. On any given day, I was lucky to get a couple of dozen hits. That's paltry, and in the end it just doesn't inspire me to keep on going. It's understandable (see above), but it's not sustainable unless I'm getting some personal gratification out of doing it. Once it started to feel like a chore to put up a blog post that hardly anyone was going to read, I decided to call the whole thing off. For a while, anyway. Perhaps at some point I'll feel compelled to raise this blog from the dead, breathing life back into it and sending it forth once more to do my bidding. Until then, I want to thank my very small cadre of loyal readers who have read, enjoyed and sometimes even commented on my posts here over the last couple of years. Thanks for coming along for the ride!

I Write Too Much

2011-06-27T06:00:00.000-04:00

I'm a classic example of the fact that knowing your weaknesses doesn't ensure that you'll correct them. Case in point: my emails are invariably too long. If the subject matter lends itself to or seems (to me) to require any amount of significant detail, I find myself utterly unable to be concise. There's simply too much information that I believe the reader needs to have, and the fact that the volume of info will cause the reader to skip over the bulk of it (possibly missing key points) is, in my mind, not so much irrelevant as unavoidable. Try as I might, I simply cannot bring myself to leave out key info. This has been a problem for me for many years. Time and again, people - friends, coworkers, even bosses - have told me that my emails are too long, too pretentious-sounding, and aren't as effective as they should be. Yet in every instance, they've also conceded that the information in them is absolutely valuable and necessary.

Therein lies the crux of my problem. It's not that the content of the emails is inappropriate, it's that the forum is. Emails don't lend themselves well to careful analysis. People don't expect to have to read them all that closely. After all, most businesspeople are likely to receive upwards of 100 emails in a given day (sometimes MANY more than that) and they get used to skimming them, glossing over the contents, and then moving on. And what's come along even more recently that's replacing email for many people? Texting - which is even shorter, less detailed, and less able to convey critical information.

I confess, this isn't something I've found an ideal solution to. My best approach, when something is really important, has been to call someone on the phone or speak to them in person. This way I can convey key info in detail, using tone of voice and inflection to hold their attention and help emphasize how vital the information is to them. This has several downsides compared to email, however, so it's not perfect. For example:

1. Email leaves a written record. The recipient can refer to it later to ensure they haven't forgotten anything. I can refer to it later to recall exactly what I said and when. It also serves as a CYA (ie. "Cover Your Ass") in the event that I have to defend what info I provided and at what time.

2. Email is convenient. I can write it whenever I have time, and the recipient can read it whenever they have the time. The approaches of using the phone or speaking face-to-face require that I work around my schedule and the schedule of whomever else I need to communicate with, which in the busy, meeting-intensive business world can take hours and result in a lot of lost time playing phone-tag.

3. My memory sucks. It sucks worse when I'm face-to-face with somebody and I have a mental list of things I need to tell them. Some mischievous part of my subconscious likes to ensure that I forget at least one important detail, maliciously blanking it from my memory. This means I have to either bring a list and refer to it (which doesn't always help - if I'm nervous for whatever reason, I'm inclined to forget to look at my list) or go back after and follow up with a, "oh yeah, I forgot." Both of those solutions look bad.

4. Unless I call a meeting or schedule a conference call, I can only face-to-face with one person at a time. It's not uncommon that the info I need to get across is relevant to a range of individuals. I can send one email to all of them at once, or spend hours (or days) trying to bring them together at a mutually-convenient time, hope all of them show up, and tell them in person. Assuming I've got the clout to call them together and get them to come.

One way to handle some of these issues is to have a face-to-face followed by an email where I recap the key points of the conversation. This ends up taking as much time as the email I'd have preferred to send in the first place, compounded with the time I had to spend tracking them down and having the conversation in person.

What I really need is a type of psionic mental command power with which I can compel people to just read my vital, useful, clever emails. The world would be a better place if they did. Hey, wait - you read this all the way through, right?

My Daughter's Finest Year

2011-06-24T06:00:00.002-04:00

I write posts for a wide array of different reasons. Some are to share my thoughts on issues or to spread my opinion with a wider audience. Some are to convey knowledge. Some are just for fun. But a selection of articles here are for the future. Someday, many years from now, my kids will be able to read these posts and get a sense of their old dad's life at the time, his past, and even of their own younger selves. This is one of those.

My daughter's finishing up what I believe is her most successful year of school so far. Her grades weren't outstanding - she's a pretty solid B+ student who's going to have to work hard in coming years to compensate for the material she didn't quite master so far. But she had two incredible successes this year that, in the grand scheme of her life, surely will have a more profound effect on her than whether the grades on her report card were 5-10 points higher or not.

The first success had to do with her music. There are actually two performances in this category - one on the piano, the other on the trumpet. She's been a pianist now for... man, I think it's around five years. I'm sure she's been playing under her current instructor for at least four, and we'd brought in another fellow, Calvin, for a year or so prior to that to get her started. He was a lousy teacher, really - no clue how to teach at all - but it was enough to prove that she had some talent and enough interest that it was worth pursuing, so we kept going. As is her nature, she's not big on challenging herself, but every so often she finds a piece she really wants to play that's just a bit of a stretch for her and she tackles it. That happened this year.

In the spring, the school's new music teacher, Mrs. McGee, organized the school's first piano recital. It was awesome - I'd read about the recital's she'd held previous years at her old school before it closed, and I was always envious that our kids didn't get to do it here. And then they were! I don't recall what my daughter played - one of her own compositions, probably. For a couple of years she was churning them out pretty often and they were quite good. I really need to get them made into usable audio files sometime. Regardless, I don't remember what she played, but another girl played Journey's classic "Don't Stop Believin'" and my daughter fell in love with it. I had to go buy her the sheet music right away, and nothing would do until she learned it. To her credit, she practiced it relentlessly until she could play it perfectly and even without the music. For the last few months of the year, she's played it around school whenever anyone would let her at the piano, and I gather she's gotten a pretty positive response, even from kids who've known her for years and have heard her play lots of times in the past. That's pretty cool!

Granted, it's not as cool as what she did with her trumpet. She's been playing the trumpet for about three years, and I've forced her to practice 30 minutes every weekday throughout that time. It wasn't easy, either - she's about the least self-motivated kid you'd want to meet when it comes to anything she doesn't really want to do. Strike that - the reality is, she struggles with things that are challenging, and prefers to avoid them. Sorry, kiddo - I call 'em like I see 'em. Anyway, she wouldn't be caught dead just going in, picking up her trumpet (or sitting at the piano) and playing without being forced to. But after a few years of wrangling, at least she finally relented to actually doing her daily practices without a tantrum, which I can live with.

After her first year with the trumpet, we asked her band teacher for suggestions of material she could work on over summer break. The teacher sent us off to the music store, and we came home with two books. One had various "traditional" tunes, from the Battle Hymn of the Republic to When the Saints Go Marching In, Tom Dooley, and even The Entertainer. For whatever reason, she took an instant dislike to that book and hasn't touched it in two years. The other book was sheet music from various movies, including The Lord of the Rings, Rocky (Gonna Fly Now), the Pink Panther and others. She messed around with that one a little, but didn't really try to play anything out of it for a year or so. Eventually, she learned to play the theme from the Lord of the Rings movies and the Pink Panther. And boy, does she play the hell out of the Pink Panther.

She not only has the notes down - playing it without any of the squealed missteps that were pretty common during the first couple years when she was still learning the instrument - but she can actually make this cool growling sound that fits the tune perfectly. As young as she is, it's a pretty impressive piece to hear her play. Granted, the sheet music in that book is abridged so there's a sizable section of the original tune missing, but when you're listening to her play that's the last thing on your mind.

So this year she really nailed that tune and played it often. She practiced it just about every day here at home, and I gather she wasn't shy about playing it at school during her band practice and instrument lessons, either. Diving briefly off-topic, it's funny to listen to her talk about her peers and their music. As much as she hates to practice, she has no patience with the other kids, most of whom (she believes, probably not incorrectly) don't practice much if at all. She's forever complaining about it, entirely disregarding her own reluctance. I suppose not all parents choose to "make their stand" on the hill of instrument practice. Eh, you choose your battles, and I decided this one was worth fighting for. I personally regret never learning a lesson, an omission I'm doing my best to rectify now with my guitar lessons. But I digress.

Evidently she impressed her band teacher with the tune, because at their spring band concert, the teacher did something I've never seen done before in the 9-10 band performances I've attended these last few years - she let my daughter do a solo of the Pink Panther, accompanied by the band teacher on trombone and another young fellow on the drums. She got up there and played and growled and blasted her way through that tune, and it caught the packed auditorium of parents completely by surprise. When she was done, the applause was tremendous and I don't think I've ever seen her look happier. Well, maybe once...

You see, her other big achievement this year was as Sarah Brown, the lead in the class musical Guys and Dolls. I don't think she's ever wanted anything in her life as much as she wanted that part. She saw her friend gearing up to be Annie in last year's musical and she just knew she had to be up there on the stage belting out songs and performing for the crowd. She immediately started asking what this year's play would be and, once they told her, she set out to learn everything she could. She watched the DVD (the old one with Marlon Brando as Sky Masterson), the learned the songs, and dissected the parts and figured out which one she wanted, then she went for it. I discovered that she was schmoozing with the Art and Music teachers - who'd be casting the parts and directing the show. I found her singing the character's songs to make sure she knew them cold. Then it was time for the audition. Then the call-backs. Then the cast list. She got it!! She'd gotten the part! I swear, she was walking three feet off the ground for a solid month after that, possibly two.

When she got her script, she relentlessly stuffed every line, every song, every scene into her brain until she knew it inside and out. She even marshaled her fellow performers, helping to herd them into place when they didn't hit their entrances or their marks. She learned her leading man's lines because his head wasn't entirely in the game and he had a tendency to forget them. And when it came time for the one big night, she gave it everything she had. She sang, she spoke her lines, she hit her marks and she played her part like a pro. I've never been prouder of my girl, and she was absolutely beaming with pride. She knew she'd hit it out of the park. She knew she'd nailed it cold. And if she hadn't known, the onslaught of well-wishers - people she knew, people she didn't know, and practically every kid in the school - would certainly have made it clear.

And I never made her practice anything for it. I never (well, almost never) nagged her about learning her lines or practicing her songs. Her mom and I supported her and let her run with it. She was self-motivated, self-driven, and determined, and she achieved everything she could have dreamed of. I hope some kind of lesson, some deeper meaning, came out of it for her, because I know she's capable of so much if she just believes in herself. Perhaps, just perhaps, after such an incredible, successful year, she'll figure that out for herself, too. The school year's over as of today - here's hoping for many more great ones yet to come!

Social Deals - The Real Thing (for Some Businesses)

2011-06-22T06:00:00.001-04:00

There's a lot we have to learn at Five Star Martial Arts, and I don't just mean Karate. A big part of my job is to leverage my business experience to pave over some of the bigger potholes and speed bumps before we hit them, but a lot of what we face is new to me as well. I've never been responsible for advertising, for example, so now I have to draw on what I've learned in my MBA program and what I've seen my friends in the Marketing Departments do.

And some of our challenges are just plain new, because they involve technologies and services that simply didn't exist before. Social Marketing is one big one - using Facebook to serve existing customers by providing a constant (daily) stream of news, events, motivation, encouragement, recognition, articles and other information. It also serves potential new customers, giving them a taste of what we're all about, showing how active and dynamic we are, and showing that we're "hip," using this new technologies that a lot of our competitors either don't bother with or don't use with energy and consistency the way we do. Sadly, it's hard to draw conclusive effectiveness data from social marketing on Facebook. Did we actually get any new students or retain any existing ones because we were using Facebook aggressively? I have no way to really tell, but it seems like a good idea anyway.

The other brand-new technology is the "Daily Deal" form of social marketing. I'm referring of course to tools like Groupon and Livingsocial (among many others). I'm not personally responsible for using this tool at my business, but I have input and I try to account for it in my strategic business planning. And a powerful tool it can be, if used for the right purposes. Sort of like The Force, I suppose.

I read an article recently about how Groupon, as a company, is more or less one big Ponzi scheme, paying today's bills with the deal they're going to offer tomorrow, and so on. Moreover, the article argued that companies dealing with Groupon were at severe risk of digging themselves into a hole, relying on the sales of new Groupon offers to pay for the supplies they needed in order to fulfill the previous ones they'd sold. Well, here - you can read the article for yourself: Why Groupon is Poised to Collapse.

I can't entirely disagree with the article, because I just don't have enough facts. But I can sort of disagree, because I've personally seen some incredible results using these tools. I even left a comment about it on that article. Here it is:

Like any other business tool, companies need to be smart about how they use Groupon. It's not going to be for every business. You can only afford to sell at or below your cost for a very short time before you overload yourself and go under. The business I work with - a martial arts and fitness center - has been EXTREMELY HAPPY with Groupon and LivingSocial. They bring us QUALIFIED LEADS in the form of customers who have already paid for the privilege of trying us out before they've even walked in the door to see the place. Read that again - they PAID for the privilege to come see what we're all about. And what we give them back in return effectively costs us nothing (at least in terms of inventory or product) - it's the service of our knowledge and our classes, both of which were going to be there anyway. Granted, when we sold over 200 fitness classes the first time - expecting to sell 20-30 if we were really lucky - it stressed us out a bit and we needed to buy some extra equipment in a hurry, but it was totally worth it and then some. The cash we got from Groupon itself was a pittance, but the new customers we gained - especially those we've been able to convert into long-term clients under contract - are irreplaceable. PLUS, we've managed to get in the game early and beat our competitors to the punch. We consistently see them showing up AFTER us with similar deals that sell much worse than ours - because we've already captured that market.

I'm positive that a lot of companies would lose their shirts using Groupon. That may arguably even be Groupon's fault if they're overselling their own product and not divulging the ristks, but I can say with confidence that it's a tremendous service for the right industry, and we're thrilled we got on board with them when we did.

I'll tell you, success feels good, and these new "social" tools feel like they're successful to me. They're working like crazy for us, anyway. Every business struggles with basic challenges like building brand identity and getting the word out to potential new customers. How can anybody find out how awesome you are if they've never heard of you. Advertising is expensive, but Groupon (as one example) PAYS YOU for the privilege of advertising your services to a broad range of customers. And it pulls them in by the truckload. If you're the right kind of business to take advantage of that without losing more than you can afford in the deal, maybe you can win with social deal marketing, too.

America - Land of the Sports Silos

2011-06-20T06:00:00.000-04:00

In business, the term "silo" deals with business units, departments, or product lines that have been segmented apart from each other. It's not usually a good thing - there's little or no communications, knowledge-sharing, or exchange of resources across an organization that's been silo'd.

I'm not talking about business here, though. I think we're a culture of silos here in America - everything is "for ____________, not for ___________," For instance, baseball is for boys, not for girls. Actually, all but a handful of sports seems to fall into that pattern, and the ones that are open to girls... nobody seems to care about except for the players and their families. It's not just a gender issue, though. Since getting re-involved in the martial arts at Five Star Martial Arts, I've noticed that it transcends all aspects of our society. For example:

Karate is for little kids, not adults.
Yoga is for women, not men.
Tai Chi is for old people, not young people.
Zumba is for women, not men.

What's strange about all of these, is that they're demonstrably, historically both untrue and actually backwards. Karate, for instance, was practiced exclusively by adults (primarily men) for most of the last 100 years. In some dojos, and especially in Japan, no one under 16 can even achieve a full black belt rank. Yet in the U.S., Karate is seen as being for little kids, and adults seem to dismiss it as something to keep the kids entertained rather than a true combat art.

Yoga has been around for hundreds of years, and throughout that entire time, the leading practitioners, teachers, and masters of Yoga have been... say it with me... MEN! That's right, Indian guys were the creators of Yoga and its primary practitioners for centuries.

Tai Chi is, of course, Chinese. And in China, freaking EVERYBODY does it. Young or old, male or female, it makes no difference. In China, 1.35 billion people all recognize the benefits of Tai Chi, but in the U.S. I've literally see classes where nobody under the age of 50 was welcome. Seriously? What the hell!?!

Oh, and Zumba? Zumba's easy. It was created by Alberto "Beto" Perez, and the company's senior managers are all guys.

I was a teen when I started karate - so was my wife. Now I'm middle-aged, and I'm back at it harder than ever. I'm getting a lot of benefit out of Yoga practice, too. I'd love to learn Tai Chi as well, and hope to at some point. What I don't get is how to break down the silos? How do you convince Americans - who love to engage in the game of "it's for ____________ not ___________" - that they're missing out on some amazing fitness because they perceive it as being for some other demographic group? I'll have to work on that one. And I'll rely on all my various fitness options to help put me in the proper frame of mind to figure it out.

[D&D] Monster Mythology - Jurlexatial the Reclaimer's Servants

2011-06-17T06:00:00.003-04:00

So I'm undertaking a small contribution to the "Monster Mythology" project over at Purple Worm.org, the "Home of 2nd Edition AD&D." On Wednesday, I posted my old notes on humanoid god Jurlexatial, the All-Father. Today, I'll expand on his servants - the priests and paladins who have entered his service.

The Priesthood
Known as Disciples, Hunters, and in groups, Packs. The priests of Jurlexatial are, at this point, indoctrinated through dreams of the Vanquisher, instructed in the methods of worship and lured with (justified) promises of wielding power beyond that which any Shaman possesses (spells as high as 7th level!). They are appearing throughout the humanoid populace, but can expect little direct aid from their weakened god beyond granted powers and spells. Any “humanoid” race can join the ranks of the priesthood, including gnolls (and flinds), goblins, hobgoblins, kobolds, orcs (and orogs), ogres, and so on (see Complete Book of Humanoids). Even some of the lesser giants, such as furbolg, fomorian, and verbeeg, could conceivably join the faith. The priests are expected to be aggressive and independent in surviving and spreading the faith.

Spheres
Major - All, Animal, Combat, Healing, Necromantic, Guardian
Minor - Divination, Elemental, Plant, Protection

Granted Powers
1st Level:
Turn Undead
+4 to attacks and damage vs. Shamans of humanoid "gods"
Pass without trace through underbrush at full movement rate
Tracking ability as a ranger
Bonus Proficiencies:
Weapon - Great Axe Specialization (1d10/2d6)
Non-Weapon - hunting

3rd Level:
Claws of the Beast (see below) 2/day

5th Level:
Incite Berserker Rage in other humanoids, conveying +2 to attack and damage rolls.
- takes 1 round of chanting and affects up to 1 creature per level who cannot be engaged in combat during the round of chanting (must be within 15-20’, must be able to hear, etc.). The first creature affected is always the caster.

7th Level:
Shapeshift into one type of carnivorous animal, 3/day
    - change includes clothing and weapons
    - must declare the type of animal when reaching 7th level.

Responsibilities
May only eat meat - immune to raw-meat-related diseases.
Must pray with flames and incense to receive spells.
Sexual contact is prohibited (as a result of the repercussions of Jurl coupling with the goddess)
Must hunt during the full moon. Failure to kill prey results in a -1 to saves and the loss of one spell per spell level until the next full moon.
Blunt weapons, including flindbars, are prohibited.

Claws of the Beast (Alteration)
   Duration: 1 round/level
   The use of this power causes the priest's hands to
   temporarily develop short, thick claws. This allows the
   priest to make two attacks per round, doing 1d4+1 hp
   damage per claw, and allowing attacks against monsters
   struck only by +1 or better weapons. The caster is still
   able to manipulate objects while this power is in effect,
   and can cast spells as well. Activation of this power is at
   will and instantaneous.

Paladins
Paladins of Jurlexatial are the militant arm of the Hunter. They almost always reside on the surface, though paladins do exist among subterranean dwellers. Their abilities may be modified or completely different. The surface paladins are master hunters and warriors. They are expected to expand the faith just as priests do, but are also called upon to lead battles both against the shamans of the "sons" and against human and demi-human civilization. Paladins slain by "civilized" races are automatically called to hunt with Vurkhon, while paladins who die in battle against shamans are rumored to become tortured spirits, trapped between life and death until they are able to slay their enemy. The brotherhood of Jurlexatial’s paladins is open to all humanoid races (see “Complete Book of Humanoids). Some of the lesser giant species, such as hill giants, furbolg, fomorian, and verbeeg, could conceivably become paladins, also.

Spheres
Major - All, Animal, Combat, Healing, Necromantic, Guardian
Minor - Divination, Elemental, Plant, Protection

Granted Powers
1st Level:
+4 to attacks and damage vs. shamans of humanoid "gods"
Tracking proficiency as Ranger (+1 per 3 levels)
Immune to disease
Move Silently as Ranger
Hide in Shadows as Ranger
    - Both require studded leather armor or lighter
    - Both work in natural surroundings only (reduced to 1/2 in cities or dungeons)
Bonus Proficiencies:
    Weapon - Great Axe Specialization (1d10/2d6)
    Non-Weapon - Hunting

3rd Level:
Pass without trace through underbrush at full movement rate.

5th Level:
Call for animal companion (a 2-4 HD carnivore that will join the paladin and live at his side). Typical examples – worgs/wolves, bears, large cats, etc.

9th Level:
Cast spells as per paladin spell table
Berserker Rage 1/day, conveying +2 to attacks and damage.
    - takes 1 round to initiate, lasts until all enemies are vanquished.

Responsibilities
May only eat meat personally killed.
Must pray with flames and incense to receive spells.
Sexual contact is prohibited (as a result of the repercussions of Jurl coupling with the goddess)
Must hunt during the full moon. Failure to kill prey results in a -1 to attack, damage, and saves until the next successful full moon hunt.
Blunt weapons, including flindbars, are prohibited.
Must make war on humans, demi-humans, and servants of the "sons."
Paladins disdain missile weapons.

So that's it for Jurlexatial. If you like this or use it in your game, I'd love to hear from you.

This material is copyright Virtual Vellum, 2011. Permission to reproduce for personal, non-profit use is granted. All other rights, including publication or transmission online, distribution, or publication for profit are reserved.

[D&D] Monster Mythology - Jurlexatial the Reclaimer

2011-06-15T06:00:00.002-04:00

Through the web forums at Purple Worm.org, the "Home of 2nd Edition AD&D," I've decided to join in on the "Monster Mythology" project, at least with one entry. I remember being really fond of the "Complete Book of Humanoids" - it opened up a whole plethora of new races and cultures to explore. I liked it so much that I even ran an all-humanoid campaign for a short time. We didn't get very far with it, but I had fun designing the campaign and the adventures, including a god just for humanoids, with his own history, goals, challenges, and priestly class. And so I give you Jurlexatial the Reclaimer!

Jurlexatiel, the Reclaimer - god of all humanoids
    Other names:        Jurlexatial the Overlord - ancient
                                 Jurl, the All-Father
                                 Jurl, One-Eye
                                 Khurmidg - gnoll for “hunter”
                                 Vurkhon - hobgoblin for “father”
                                 The Reborn (new)
                                 The Vanquisher (new)
                                 Dark Father

History:
[As described by Murlek, ancient Orcish prophet]
When the world was new and the gods were young, Jurlexatial and his fellow deities ruled the land and heavens. Each took a part in creating the land and its inhabitants. Thus were the men and elves and dwarves and animals born. Some gods took sway over the forests, some the heavens, others the meek. There were gods for building, for music and dance, gods of duty and gods of darkness. Jurlexatial, for his part, was primarily one of the latter. He chose to create animals of strength and cunning to populate the forests. His creations preyed upon the weak and slow and kept them from becoming too numerous.

One day, while walking in the gardens of heaven, the Hunter came upon a maiden goddess who had given wisdom and skill to man and elf and dwarf. Overcome with desire, Jurlexatial forced himself upon this goddess in the gardens. He then dragged her unconscious body to his home and kept her there.

Each morning, the Overlord would come to her and demand that she swear her undying devotion to him. He would then give her until nightfall to consider her answer. Each dusk, Jurlexatial would return and each dusk the goddess would spit in his face. Each night he would ravish and beat her until she fell unconscious, then leave again to hunt with his animals. As an immortal, the goddess knew that this daily beating could continue for eternity.

She began to foster a hatred for the god of the hunt which overcame even her immense wisdom. As time progressed, the seeds of Jurlexatial's assaults began to germinate and the goddess grew large with child. As the months passed, the goddess grew as large as a hut, and the Hunter became anxious to see his children.

Seeing that her impregnation pleased Jurlexatial, the goddess bent her thoughts inward. In each child's mind, she planted a hatred for Jurlexatial as blinding as her own. Their minds and bodies became twisted with a thirst for blood. While implanting this hatred, she also robbed them of the wisdom which she had given to man. Every day she infused her offspring with the cruelest thoughts and the most burning hatred.

Eventually, the goddess became so swollen that she burst, and from her ruptured corpse emerged the sons of Jurlexatial. So were born the gods of the bugbears, gnolls, hobgoblins, kobolds, lizard men, ogres, and orcs. They sprang, fully-grown, from their mother and immediately devoured her.
Jurlexatiel was pleased with his progeny. They carried many of the characteristics of his hunting animals, yet stood erect and showed intelligence. Naming himself the All-father, Jurlexatial immediately began to train his sons to hunt and track and live in the wilds. He taught them the secrets of creation and magic. When he felt they had learned all he could teach them, he gave them power over his creations and retired to the great forest to spend the rest of eternity hunting.

Addendum:
[As revealed to the new Disciples of Jurlexatial]
In fact, the sons of Jurlexatial did not wait for their father to leave on his own. When they felt they had learned enough, they rose against him and destroyed him, or so they thought. They then used their limited abilities to create followers in their own images, and set them into the forests and hills and caves where they would be safe from the children of the other gods. Though they took great interest in their offspring, they were never true gods and did not possess the power of their father. Thus, their shamans and witch doctors could never hope to wield magic like their human and elven counterparts and their children were safe only in great numbers.

That was thousands of years ago. Jurlexatial has now awakened from his death-like slumber. Weakened by his long absence and lack of worshipers, he cannot yet deal with his sons. Instead, he has reached out to the minds of his sons' creations and offered them power in return for service. Centuries from now, when his priests have sway over large tribes of humanoids, Jurlexatial plans to wipe out all of his sons' shamans and kill each of the sons in turn. Then, he will claim what he feels is the humanoids' rightful place in the world. He believes that humans and demi-humans have thrived unfairly because the humanoids had only demi-gods to watch over them. Jurl plans to launch a crusade against the humans, with an army of humanoids in his service.

Jurlexatial - Intermediate/Greater God
Jurl has always been a cold, blood-thirsty hunter. He is a god of carnivores. He takes what he wants and needs, disregarding others. He is a master hunter and warrior, thrilling in conquest and bloodshed.
The overlord deeply resents both the actions of his sons and the fact that his "people" are being driven deeper into the forests as mankind and demi-humans expand their territory. He welcomes all humanoids to his breast and seeks to unite them. He is no paragon of wisdom, but has an animal cunning and an innate sense of the hunt which makes him extraordinarily dangerous in battle.

Check back for priest and paladin character class descriptions for followers of Jurlexatial! If you like this or use it in your game, I'd love to hear from you.

This material is copyright Virtual Vellum, 2011. Permission to reproduce for personal, non-profit use is granted. All other rights, including publication or transmission online, distribution, or publication for profit are reserved.

My First Seminar

2011-06-13T06:00:00.002-04:00

On Saturday, June 11th, I attended my first martial arts seminar. The key word there is "my." I've attended lots of seminars, especially when I've trained at Aikido of Central New York, both now and in the past. I love seminars - so much knowledge and training packed into a few hours. But Saturday was the first seminar that I was personally responsible for. I proposed it to my Senseis at Five Star Martial Arts. And to their credit, they gave me the go-ahead, even though they really didn't know much about Aikido. I then made the arrangements with Yousuf Mehter Sensei at Aikido of CNY, who was extremely gracious to such a young dojo that had never done anything like a guest seminar before. I scheduled everything, created all of the marketing materials, and promoted the seminar for the better part of a month. At the seminar, I greeted all of the attendees, checked everyone in at the front desk, and showed our guests around the dojo. My Senseis even kindly allowed me to make the opening introductory remarks and kick off the day's training. This was my baby - something I'd never done before.

I confess, I was a bit nervous leading up to this. I take a lot of pride in doing a good job, in being successful, and in serving with quality and distinction whenever I take on a task. I wanted this to be a big success, for many reasons. Of course, my own personal credibility was on the line. It would have been very embarrassing to me and to my dojo if nobody showed up for this seminar. As it was, we had to shift the children's class into the main adult seminar because only a handful of kids signed up (and most of them were mine). But more than that, this was the very first guest seminar at my home dojo, and its success or failure could easily have an impact on the future of seminars at our school.

I believe martial arts seminars are important. Learning from different instructors who are recognized as experts in their style is truly valuable. More, I think that exposure to different styles is useful to the martial artist who wants to be well-rounded and to understand all ways that different styles approach movement, strikes, blocks, stances, grappling, and all of the other aspects of hand-to-hand combat, fitness, training methodology, and martial arts theory. I also like the way seminars can bring people together from different dojos to meet, train with each other, and form part of a larger martial arts community.

As such, I sincerely want seminars to be available as a regular, ongoing part of the training for Five Star's Karate students. And the only way that's likely to happen is if they're successful, well-attended, and well-regarded by the students, the Senseis, and the other martial artists in the area. So when I say that Saturday's seminar could easily have had a long-term impact - positive or negative - on the future of seminars at Five Star, it's not difficult to believe.

Fortunately, it was a huge hit. We had about 20 total participants, including some senior students from Aikido of CNY who were extremely helpful to the Aikido novices at Five Star. Sensei Mehter spent two solid hours teaching us a series of techniques that all built on the basics of the style - notably Ikkyo, Nikyo, and Sankyo. He was a terrific instructor as always, and really great with the six kids and pre-teens who attended. In between techniques, he would call the children up to the front to show what they'd learned, which they all seemed to really enjoy. And so did everyone else. The look of wonder on everyone's face was incredibly gratifying. The awe and amazement they expressed at what we were learning sent my spirit soaring. THIS is exactly how a seminar is supposed to be - enthusiastic martial artists being blown out of the dogis by the fantastic new knowledge they're learning that's different from anything they've trained in before.

I got to make the rounds a lot, working with everyone and lending the benefits of my limited experience to those with even less than I have. I got to experience their joy up close. Now looking back on it a couple of days later, I'm filled with gratitude to everyone who helped bring the seminar together and make it a success - to Mehter Sensei, to Senseis Pastore and Napoli, to the attendees from Aikido of CNY and the Oswego Aikido Club, and to the student participants from Five Star Martial Arts. The bar has been set and set high - our next seminar will have to be outstanding to compare with this one, but at least everybody will know that a Five Star Seminar means the best in quality martial arts instruction. People will talk, word will get out, and the next time Mehter Sensei comes and teaches for us (if he graciously agrees to return in a year or so, perhaps), I fully expect to have twice as many people on the floor, eager to see why everyone raved about this seminar so much. I know I'll be there!

[Karate] Yoga and the Severely Inflexible

2011-06-09T06:00:00.000-04:00

My body doesn't particularly like to stretch or twist. I suspect part of this may just be how I'm built - I've never been very flexible, even when I was much younger. I know I have a deformity in my wrist bones (specifically the ulna bone in my left forearm, and probably my right) that caused me to need surgery about 20 years ago. It wouldn't surprise me to learn that the source of my hip pain and general leg inflexibility is of a similar nature. My mother pointed out to me after my last post that when I was very young, I'd needed corrective shoes to address a misalignment in my hips that was affecting my walk (making me pigeon-toed). So now I'm left to wonder - is my hip pain and my inability to gain significant flexibility in my upper legs caused by that same defect? Or did the process of correcting my walk cause my hips to twist into a position that ultimately causes me other problems? I may have to talk to my doctor about it at some point soon. My hip pain isn't constant, but it's bad enough that, for instance, I have to play my electric guitar standing up, because having it rest on my leg hurts now.

Meanwhile, I'm addressing my flexibility issues as directly as I know how - through Yoga. Suami Michael Smith recently started offering Yoga classes at Five Star Martial Arts and I've attended them all. Mike's approach is pretty cool. He's very comfortable with beginners, taking time with each new student to show them the details of the poses and techniques, and then continuing to offer tips and encouragement as we progress. He also teaches a class that's a great blend of stretching, breathing, and strength-building. For instance, he taught us a plank modification the other day that involved a push-up, and we did an ab-building exercise that left me sore for days. Finally, I like the way Suami Michael blends hints of karate into his Yoga. From stances to movement, his background in the martial arts makes the class very relevant to me.

It wouldn't be accurate to say that I've seen no improvement in my flexibility in the year that I've been studying the martial arts. It's just that it's not enough, and in particular my kicks suffer quite a bit because I can't get them up where they need to be. I'm not significantly closer to doing a split than I was a year ago, which means my side kicks, hook kicks, and roundhouse kicks just don't get up where I want them. But in just a handful of Yoga classes, I've seem some flexibility improvement already. I figured if anything could help, it would be Yoga.

So I'm now addressing my breathing through Aikido and Yoga classes. I'm working on my balance through Iaido and Yoga. And I'm working on my flexibility through Karate and Yoga. Hey, I see a common thread there! I admit, I went into Yoga as a fairly blank slate and as open a mind as I could manage, but I wasn't necessarily sure I was going to stick with it. Now, I'm sold. I'm in for the long haul, I think. And I look forward to using good balance and proper breathing... as I kick people in the head!!!

[Karate] Overdoing It

2011-06-06T06:00:00.005-04:00

Sometimes, we definitely can push too hard. That's all too easy to do when you're training often, as I am. Beyond that, on Thursday and Friday, I trained in Aikido, Iaido, Yoga, and Kenpo. I'm in much better shape than a year ago, but that's still pretty intense. Thursday's Aikido class was particularly punishing. I had my elbow wrenched to the side - the same elbow that someone had landed on at the seminar I attended two months ago. The pain's pretty well gone now, in fact after a good Aikido workout it felt better than it had since I'd first hurt it, though afterward it ached for a couple of days. For whatever reason, I chose that same session to try my first hardfall in about 18 years. Successfully, as it turns out, but it put a kink into my lower flank that followed me into the weekend.

It's also not uncommon for workouts to make my hip(s) hurt. I'm not sure if it's the butterfly stretch or the split (well, what I do doesn't much resemble a split, truth be told) or throwing sidekicks, but it puts a nice searing hot thorn into my hip joint for me. It's far from constant and usually little more than an annoyance, but naturally it raised its ugly, um, head after two rough days of falling (on purpose), stretching, twisting, and kicking.

The result was a couple days of soreness and aches - not the kind of muscle aches you expect from a good workout. Not even the hobble-inducing soreness I used to get in my quadriceps when I'd spend too much time in seiza. Thankfully, that seems to be largely a thing of the past. No, this was joint pain - joints and bones and tendons all scolding me for overdoing it. It's over now, and it should become less prevalent with time as I continue to train, but it's certainly a cautionary tale - it's possible to do too much, push too hard, and your body will let you know when that's happened.

My Weight-Loss Experience

2011-06-03T06:00:00.000-04:00

An old friend of mine recently asked about my weight-loss. He wondered if I planned to lose more, and he expressed concern that he was still going in the wrong direction - getting heavier. He didn't specifically ask for my advice, but I can't help offering it when I see that it may be helpful. My message to him is below. I thought perhaps others might find it of use.

(In answer to the question whether I'm still trying to lose more weight:)
I need to lose another 20-25 pounds at some point. I may not make it that far, but I definitely want to drop at least another ten.

I'm sorry to hear you're struggling - I can really relate. Different things work for different people, and I know you travel a lot for work which is a miserable thing to do to a person's body, but some of what helped me was:

1. Counting calories. I would fool myself about how eating X or Y wasn't really a big deal, but once I knew I had to write it down and add it up, I found it a lot easier to cut out the garbage or eat smaller portions of it. I admit I have a very hard time sticking with calorie counting over the long haul because it's a pain in the nuts, but when I want to knuckle down and drop pounds, it's absolutely key for me.

2. Vigorous cardio workouts 2-4 times a week, for at least 30-40 minutes per session. This was the other key for me. Once I got into karate (and it's "Americanized" karate, so every class has a big cardio component) I started to slim down. It's not specifically the karate that did it, it's just the fact that I finally found something that didn't bore me to tears (like pretty much any other exercise) so I stuck with it. Normally I'd either talk about something and then never do it, or I'd start something new, do it for a month, get mediocre results, and give up. I have a $1,000 treadmill in my basement rusting away because two months of 20-minute jogs did exactly squat - I was still stuffing my face with junk and there's no way burning 300 calories on a jog makes up for 1000 calories of garbage.

One trick that worked with me when I was traveling a lot (if it's an option for you) was to stay at a Homewood Suites-style place that has an in-room fridge/stove/microwave and buy my own groceries. I ate a lot better than when I went to dinner at a steakhouse every night (much as I enjoy steak).

If I can offer any other guidance or help in any way, let me know. I feel your pain and I know how much you want to be able to be active with your family and alive to see them grow up. I firmly believe my situation is far from unique, and that anyone can do the same if they're smart about it, ditch the excuses (I was awesome at excuses!) and focus on the results they want to achieve.

As I re-read this before sending, it occurred to me that it was pretty decent general advice for "real people" trying to get their weight and their eating under control, so I decided to post it here. If you find this helpful, I'd love to hear from you!

Iaido for Real

2011-05-31T06:00:00.003-04:00

Last Saturday was a terrific day for me. I had the great privilege of attending an Iaido seminar that was, in reality, a five-hour-long private lesson. Absolutely amazing!

On Saturday morning, I hopped in my car with my bag of clothes, my sword, my passport, and some bottled water. Two hours later, I was at Tallack Martial Arts in Kingston, Ontario. It's a really, really nice place to train. I can't tell whether it was originally a home or whether they built it specifically for their needs, but it's got two great training floors with tatami mats, plus a third room that's all bamboo laminate which is nothing short of gorgeous. If I'm ever involved in designing a dojo, I'll definitely look to incorporate some of what they've done at Tallack's.

Anyway, I met one other fellow - Brian, from Perth - in the parking lot on the way in. He also had a weapon bag with the distinctive shape of a katana. We knew right away that we were both there for the same thing.

I put on my full regalia. I'd picked up a traditional-style keikogi top in dark blue, and a hakama of the same color, as well as a wide, thin Iaido obi. I've been using them the last several weeks to train and it really made a huge difference in the feel of the techniques not to have my sword slapping around all over the place because my narrow karate belt couldn't hold it in place properly.

My biggest concern going into this seminar was that I'd taught myself some bad habits over the last two months. I've diligently practiced what I could remember from my first three-hour-long seminar, but I knew I'd forgotten some things and mis-remembered others. I would find those concerns justified. I'd forgotten quite a bit, as it turns out, and there was a fair amount that I was doing wrong.

It didn't really matter, however. Davis Sensei started us right at the beginning, basically as if we'd never learned any Iaido at all before. Which, really, we hadn't. I mean, in the grand scheme of things, three hours is negligible.

He began with how to walk into the room - how to hold the sword, where to bow, and where to go with the sword to set it down while warming up. He taught us the proper way to kneel down and set the sword by the correct wall. It's all very precise, very formal, very proper. In fact, that describes all aspects of Iaido - precise, formal, proper. Not to mention detailed and efficient.

That describes the next five hours, in fact - precise and detailed. We worked stances. We worked movement. We practiced drawing and sheathing our swords over and over and over again (a tiny, miniscule taste of the amount of practice it will take to do it correctly), focusing on the movement in a way Davis Sensei hadn't even attempted to convey to the full group at the first seminar I'd attended. Back and forth across the floor we'd walk in small gliding steps or shuffling half-steps. Back and forth we'd turn, again and again - a quick, efficient turn that kept you in line with enemies on both sides. In and out our blades would slide, snicking out of the saya (the scabbard) and back in again.

Later we worked some waza (techniques, sort of like kata. Actually, I'm not clear what the difference is between a waza and a kata. I need to look that up.), both standing and kneeling. I fear I don't remember them all fully. That's okay, though. I could easily spend the next month or two just practicing my stances, my movement, and the drawing of the blade and feel that I've spent my time productively. Those are, after all, the foundation on which the rest of Iaido is built.

Next year around this time, Davis Sensei has said that the Japanese masters will be coming to Ontario for the annual Canadian Iaido Association seminar and grading. According to their website, it takes one year of training to test for shodan. If Davis Sensei believes I'm ready, I'd like nothing better than to test at that time. And if I'm not... well, then I'm not. But I'll know a year's worth of Iaido that I don't know today, and that's enough for me right now.

Mind Games for Good

2011-05-27T06:00:00.000-04:00

My daughter is a reasonably talented trumpet-player. Which is to say that she's not going to win any grammys or anything, but for a kid who's been playing for three years she's not awful. She recently played a solo of the Pink Panther at her school band concert (the only solo I can remember seeing in three years of band concerts that I've been attending), backed up by her teacher on trombone and another student on drums, and the accolades she got from the kids and their parents were terrific to hear.

But my daughter has a problem - she's just not self-motivated about... well, about much of anything, really. She'll do what I tell her to do under varying degrees of duress, but, for example, there is absolutely no chance that she would walk in and pick up her trumpet and practice it if I didn't insist. She never just goes in and plays the piano, either, despite being an even more talented pianist than she is a trumpet player. She'll sit for hours doing "crafts" like bead necklaces or friendship bracelets, which is fine, but getting her to spend time on music is a big challenge.

She actually learned the Pink Panther out of a book of sheet music we bought her two years ago. The idea was to give her something new and interesting to play over summer vacation, so she wouldn't get bored playing the same music she's been practicing throughout the school year. It didn't work too well - she's highly resistant to trying new things or figuring anything out on her own, so for that year the books of music mostly sat untouched.

The following year, however, she took them to school with her and asked her band director to help her figure out how to play them. She learned the Pink Panther and the main theme from The Lord of the Rings. And once she knew them, she'd practice them, but she never did try anything new.

Fast-forward to this school year, the end of which is fast approaching. As always, I suggested that she look ahead to summer break and think about learning to play some new music so she'll have something to practice that won't be too boring. The books we bought her have a couple dozen tunes in them, only a few of which she's played. No dice - once again, she's not interested in doing anything extra, even through we both know (well, I surely do, anyway) that by mid-July she'll be complaining loudly about being bored and soundly cursing her trumpet, her parents, and her sad, sad life.

But through a happy set of circumstances, I came up with a brilliant, devious plan. It started when I saw that musicnotes.com had the music for Haydn's Tumpet Concerto. I decided to look it up on Youtube to gauge how hard it was, when I found a performance by Tine Thing Helseth. Now here's a few things to note about Tine Thing Helseth: She's a girl. She's a smokin' hot girl. And she plays the trumpet really, really well. "Hmmm," thought I. "Perhaps my daughter might find it inspiring to see a beautiful woman playing the trumpet incredibly well." Honestly, I have no idea how much a role the "beautiful" part might have played. It might have been just as impressive to my daughter if she'd been an old hag. But I couldn't wait to show it to her.

After school the other day, I called her over to the computer and played that video. My daughter, ever adept at grasping what might utterly elude others said something profound like, "Hey, she's a girl." I think she was just enchanted by the performance, though. She noted some of the more difficult aspects of the piece and was clearly impressed. I told her I could get she sheet music for her, and SHE suggested taking it in to school to have her teacher help her with it. I even found the music for Jar of Hearts, a silly pop tune she likes, and got her that as well. Summer is saved! I'm a damn genius!

The Sad State of "Modern" Nutrition

2011-05-25T06:00:00.000-04:00

I believe I mentioned before that I'd read a book titled Food Rules by Michael Pollan. It was an "eat this, don't eat that" guide broken down into a series of rules, but it made some interesting points as well. One of those points really got me thinking. I don't have the book handy, so I'll have to paraphrase and hope that I get the sentiment reasonably close. Pollan suggested that the state of nutritional science is in its relative infancy, akin to medicine back in the Renaissance.

Wow. That's an amazing, and frankly horrifying, notion. I'm by no means an expert on Renaissance medicine, but I'm not utterly unfamiliar with it. It was pretty bad in the 1600s. Oh, and the 1700s. Yes, and the 1800s were also terrible times to be sick or injured. In fact, it wasn't until the middle of the 1900s that chemistry and biology had advanced to a state where medicines became somewhat reliable, vaccines could be counted upon to ward off disease, and surgery developed into something more than a quick amputation and a roll of the dice.

So imagine if Pollan is right (and I've seen very little reason to doubt him). Nutrition is clearly a mess, especially in Western society. We're fat, we're eating a LOT of garbage that we can guess isn't really good for us, and we're under a constant barrage of "knowledge" and "science" about what will fix us. "Don't eat eggs! No, wait, eat eggs! Don't eat meat! Eat more meat! Chicken, no... beef! Cholesterol kills you! No, just the 'bad' cholesterol. Oh wait, maybe cholesterol isn't such a big deal." It goes on and on. The big vitamin manufacturers try to get us to load up on nutrients that we literally piss away. The homeopathic gurus tell us to eat this or that weed. And then a year later, we find out it doesn't actually seem to do squat, until some other new study tells us it does. It's one thing after another, leaving us running around like madpeople, crazed and confused and hungry for knowledge as much as for food.

If we're truly only as far along today as medicine was in the Renaissance, we may be nowhere close to actually understanding how the hell nutrition actually works. We might be hundreds of years away. That's hard to fathom for us - we see change happen so often and so easily these days, that it's difficult to imagine how we could fail to be right on the cusp of having this whole nutrition thing figured out. But the years go by, and we never seem to get any closer to clarity. We not only don't know for sure what we should and should not eat (and in what quantities) to fuel our bodies and ward off disease, but at a fundamental level we lack any understanding whatsoever of why one thing could be better than any other thing. We've identified vitamins, minerals, compounds, chemicals, enzymes, and all sorts of other stuff, to the point where we know it when we find it, we can remove it, add it, increase it, decrease it, and so forth, but we haven't the slightest clue why it does any of what it does. We might as well be bleeding ourselves with leeches for all the good it does.

Granted, there is stuff that demonstrably works. Getting off of a "western" diet full of processed foods, sugars, refined carbs, pesticides, hormones, and so forth seems to do a pretty good job of keeping people from looking like fat Americans, but, again, we don't really understand why (and anyone who tells you they do is just guessing. They may feel very strongly about their guesses, but they're still just making this stuff up. Which doesn't mean they're wrong.). We still need to invent the dietary equivalent of the blood transfusion, or the antibiotic, or the vaccine. I sincerely hope we don't have to wait 400 years for it (and, granted, the pace of change is MUCH faster than it was in the 1600s), but I'm not holding out hope that we're going to figure it out in the next decade, even with all the supermarket check-out aisle magazines tantalizing us with "dietary secrets revealed!"

My Martha Stewart Food Reviews

2011-05-19T06:00:00.002-04:00

So I found a link to a site where I could sign my wife up for a free year of Martha Stewart Living. These offers aren't incredibly rare - they assume that some number of people will end up subscribing, and the rest still see the ads, so it pays for itself in the long run. It's not my wife's favorite magazine - it's rather pompous for our more mundane tastes - but she likes to read it enough for it to be worth my time to make a couple of clicks and fill out an online form.

And if that had been all I'd needed to do... well, I wouldn't be blogging about it, for one.

You see, AFTER you fill out the form and you think you're all set to get your magazine, they throw a survey at you. Gah. If I'd known I needed to do that, I probably would have skipped the whole thing, but now I'm too invested to stop. They've tricked me, but I shall have my revenge. I click randomly through the survey, not even looking at the questions. My random responses will plague their statistical analysis! Mwua-ha-ha! But wait, there's more!!

I get to the bottom, and there are no fewer than FOUR large text fields. I'm now required to write a review of what I liked or disliked about four different breakfast foods. Cripes, really? Fine, I'll just throw a word into each box and... oh crap, it requires a minimum of 25 words. Dammit! Trapped again! I have no choice but to continue, but I don't have to make my responses useful! In fact, the more annoyed I got, the funnier my responses became. Enough so that I thought I'd share them with you. Note that all misspellings and other errors are intentional.

Review #1:
I like it cuz its tasty and fills me up in the morning an dhelps me get my day going. Its sweet and chewy and fills me up.

I know, it's not really funny. I was just getting started.

Review #2:
I like that its quick and easy and i can make it really fast with no truble. that way i have more time for other things like cleaning and making origami napkin animals.

Review #3:
I like it but its chewy and pulled out all my fillings once. I got new ones, but now I'm afraid to eat it anymore.

Warning - the next one is not suitable to read over breakfast.

Review #4:
I cant eat it anymore because it gives me the runs and makes me sneeze. And thats really bad if it happens at the same time and your not redy.

So at that point my wife and I are roaring. She asks, "What are you supposed to be reviewing?"

"It doesn't say," I replied. "It just said to review four breakfast foods. I decided that not naming them was part of the fun."

Yeah, I probably won't get the subscription. I'm okay with that.

Life Choices

2011-05-16T06:00:00.000-04:00

When I was a little kid, my intended careers had nothing to do with anything more than what I thought was cool at the time. My dad was a science teacher and he raised me on the Apollo space program (which was still active in my youth). My first LEGO set was the Apollo 11 moon landing, which was fairly awesome. I remember it had a grey moonscape base and the LEM lunar-lander. My dad helped me build it, which I really enjoyed. So, naturally, I wanted to be an astronaut.

Firemen were also intrinsically cool. I seem to vaguely recall owning a dress-up kit with an axe, fire extinguisher, and air mask that I liked to play with. I wanted to be a fireman.

I REALLY, and no, those caps don't do it justice, REALLY loved the short-lived TV show S.W.A.T., despite only being four years old when it debuted. I had the plastic M16 rifle, the belt with holstered sidearm, the bullet-proof vest with badge, the handcuffs - the whole set. I even had a blue cap that I turned around backwards when I was being the sniper. I spent endless hours running through the yard yelling the awesome S.W.A.T. theme song at the top of my lungs and shooting imaginary bad guys. I wanted to be... whatever the heck a S.W.A.T. guy was. I'm certain that I didn't recognize them as police officers. They were way cooler than regular police officers. But whatever they were, I wanted to be it.

When I grew up, I discovered that I didn't know what the hell I wanted to be. After two years of community college (with a straight-A average), I was no closer to figuring it out. I seemed to be best at English and it sure was easy, so I majored in that when I got to my four-year school. At some point I sort-of settled on "writer," but I don't remember how. I think I might have figured out that the two main things you can do with an English degree (aside from "nothing productive") are to write or to teach, and I sure as hell didn't want to teach.

Then I didn't get into the MFA program at SU (the fools!!), which left me with the option of heading off to the cornfields of Iowa or some damn place, leaving my brand-new fiancee' behind for a few years while I waxed poetic about corn and, if I was lucky, learned how to make a career as a writer. I sure as hell didn't know how. I tried sending query letters to a handful of magazines and such, and was roundly rebuffed. In some cases, it was clear they had entirely failed to appreciate the brilliance of my proposal. I don't have any of those submission letters, but I've found a few of my old resume cover letters and egads was I a pretentious prick. I've no doubt that my proposals were written in similar vein - as pompous and condescending as possible.

But the response terrified me. What would I do to support myself if these fools in the editing rooms weren't going to receive my work as the divinely-inspired work of unabashed brilliance that it clearly was?? So... I became a teacher. And, truth be told, I'm not convinced I was especially great at that, either.

Luckily I found my way into Information Technology and things went pretty smoothly from there for most of the next fifteen years or so. Ultimately, some of my choices panned out - I just didn't always get it right the first time. And as a kid, I definitely never said, "I want to be the guy who makes the corporate computer systems operate to effectively support the business objectives and day-to-day needs of the company." Though I might have if there'd been a TV show about somebody doing it, preferably with a really kickass theme song.

Yet my kids... my kids are taking a very different approach. My daughter waffled between dentistry and veterinary medicine, neither of which is a typical "When I grow up..." sort of choice. Okay, you could make an argument for vets because people love pets, but the only one who's ever wanted to grow up to be a dentist was that freak elf from the Rudolph cartoon. You know - the one that teaches kids that everyone hates a freak.So that's pretty different. But my boys are even weirder.

My older son has always really liked science. He likes what it teaches him, but he also likes the idea of investigative understanding of the way the universe works. When asked to consider what he might like as a career, he has actually responded thusly: "What was it that Albert Einstein did?" My response - "He was a physicist." To which my son replied, "Then yeah, I want to be a physicist." In elementary school, his role-model is Albert Freakin' Einstein. And yes, I do believe he knows who Oppenheimer was, though I'm less sure about Fermi, Szilard, and the others. Now, granted, he's not a boy-genius as far as I can tell, nor does he like to read quantum physics texts at bedtime (he very much enjoyed the Diary of a Wimpy Kid books and is currently reading Beast Quest number I've-lost-track). But still, that's a fairly uncommon career choice for such a young man. His brother's just as weird.

My youngest son, you see, has - at least for now - decided on engineering as his chosen occupation. He's something of a math whiz - certainly far better at it than I ever was in elementary school. He has, on occasion, been know to help his sister (who is five grades ahead of him) with her math homework. He's definitely better than her at adding and subtracting negative numbers. He's also the one kid in the house who will sit and build a LEGO set, according to the directions, from start to finish. I actually think he could be a very talented engineer just based on what I've seen in his admittedly short life. But really, what kind of little kid longs to be an engineer??

I worry - do my kids lack imagination? Are they too serious? Are they too grounded in reality? Then I watch them play pirates or spaceships and I know they're fine. If I'm lucky they're more than fine - they're way, way smarter than me. I'd rather they be really smart and very happy than that they just long for careers of glory the way I did. Yeah, that would be just fine by me. But now I've got that damn S.W.A.T. song stuck in my head!

Facebook Secrets! (Part 3)

2011-05-13T06:00:00.002-04:00

This series of mine recently appeared on the Martial Arts Business System page.

Three amazing tips and five incredible tricks to amaze your friends and impress your customers
Part 3 of 3

In the first two parts of this series, I explained how to move from a “Personal” page to a “Business Page” and why it’s vital that you do so. I also covered how to optimize that Business Page so it’s also a “Facebook Place,” allowing your students to announce to all of their Facebook Friends whenever they’re present at your school. Now, let’s look at how to make people want to read your Facebook page, share it with others, and even how you can help to determine what shows up on THEIR Facebook pages that will encourage them and their friends to come back and spend time on yours.

Tip #3 Be Active and Genuine on Your Page!
Just like opening your dojo didn’t guarantee a steady flood of adoring fans pouring through the door (unless you’re really lucky or already famous), creating a high-quality Facebook page doesn’t guarantee that people will find it and “like” it. You need to tell people about it, include a “Find us on Facebook” reference on all marketing materials, and it needs to be worth their time. Your page needs to feature content that’s interesting. It needs to add value to peoples’ lives. It needs to inform, entertain, provoke thought, or why should they bother? It also needs to be genuine! People can smell a phony, so you have to really want your Facebook page to be an extension of your dojo and your own personality. Once you’ve got that working for you, there are some tricks that make it even more effective.

Trick #4 Editing Links
One type of “page content” that you’re likely to want to share with your page’s fans will be internet-based media, particularly articles, blogs, and videos. These are easy enough to share, and Facebook will automatically create a “headline” and “body text” for you based on what’s on the page you’re sharing. That’s terrific when it works, but sometimes you won’t be satisfied with the headline or body Facebook creates. What a lot of people never realize is that YOU CAN CHANGE THEM!! That’s right, simply click on the headline or body and edit them until you’re happy with them. You can shorten them, add to them, or change them completely!

Trick #5 Tagging
In the old days, “tagging” meant spray-painting graffiti on a wall. In the “age of Facebook,” however, you “Tag” people or businesses by including them or referencing them in a post, picture, or video. It’s easy, too! When you post on your wall or your page’s wall, you can “Tag” anyone who is a personal friend of yours, or any page that you have “liked,” by typing the @ symbol, followed by the first letter of their name. A list of people and pages that begin with that letter will appear. Just select the one you want and Facebook inserts it into your post. Big deal, right? Yes! Because it’s inserted as a Hyperlink – other people can click on it and jump to that individual’s or business’s page! Better still, your tagging of them now shows up on THEIR wall (particularly if you have your own personal Facebook Privacy setting for “Posts by Me” set to “everyone.”), which is again a great way to insert yourself into their page where their friends are likely to see it.

Tagging photos and videos works even better – there’s actually a “tag people” button on the photo or video’s page – just click it and start typing in the names of your Facebook Friends who are in it. That photo or video will then appear on THEIR Facebook page and on THEIR FRIENDS’ newsfeeds. It’s basically an ad targeted to people who know the people you know. You know?

Mike De Lucia is a writer, accomplished business executive, and martial arts enthusiast. Mike is currently the Director of Business Operations for Five Star Martial Arts in North Syracuse, NY. His martial arts background includes dabbling in Tae Kwon Do, Aikido, Iaido, Goju-Ryu, and Kenpo Karate, which he practices along with his wife and children. Mike blogs at www.virtualvellum.com.

Facebook Secrets! (Part 2)

2011-05-11T06:00:00.000-04:00

This series of mine recently appeared on the Martial Arts Business System page.

Three amazing tips and five incredible tricks to amaze your friends and impress your customers
Part 2 of 3

In part one of this series, I explained how to migrate a “Personal” Facebook page to a “Business” page and told you why that’s so important. Next, I’ll help you make your Business Facebook page MUCH more useful in spreading the word about your school, building customer loyalty, and having some fun with the technology.

Tip #2 – Be a “Place” Too!
Congratulations, you have your own “Business” page! Now take it a step farther and become a “place.” Place pages are sort of like business pages, but it’s really geared toward serving mobile and smartphone users. You know, tweens, teens, and most adults these days! A “Place” page is just that: a page representing a physical location that people can go to. And when they’re there, it’s possible for them to tell people they’re there, which is a great boon for marketing your business. More of that in the next “trick,” but first – how to make a place page.

When you set up or edit your Business Page, making it a “place” is as easy as correctly filling in your school’s address information. When it’s working, you should see a map show up on your page’s “Basic Information” screen (accessed by clicking the “Edit Page” button). You can check or uncheck “show this map on the page,” but it’s probably best to have it there. That same map will then appear on the “Info” screen of your business’s Facebook page.

Now when smartphone users access your page through the “Facebook App,” which they can download from “touch.facebook.com” or “m.facebook.com,” they’ll have the option to “Check in” at your site. This is to be encouraged, but how and why do you encourage it?

Trick #3: Check-ins and Check-in Deals
Check-ins are great for two reasons. They show viewers of your page that you have an active community of people visiting you, which speaks well of your business. Better still, those “check-ins” show up on the Facebook page of the smartphone user who did the check-in. All of their friends will see that, “Jane is at Five Star Martial Arts.” And they’ll see it EVERY TIME she checks in there. That’s a LOT of free, frequent, repetitive advertising for your school, and it shows all of Jane’s friends just how much she values the services you’re offering. When they start thinking about those services for themselves or their friends, where are they likely to go? That’s right – it’s like you’ve inserted a commercial for your business in the middle of Jane’s Facebook page and the page of every one of her friends (because they’ll all see it on their newsfeeds)!!

So now you need to encourage Jane to “Check In” whenever she’s at your dojo! One way to do that is just to ask, often, to “please check in on your smartphones when you’re here! It’s a great way to let everyone know how we’re doing and it encourages them to check us out!” That will work great with some of your students, so definitely do it. But others like to have incentives, and Check-ins make it easy!

Back on your “Edit Page” settings, you should see a “Deals” option on the bottom of the left-hand menu. Click that, and it lets you create a “Deal” for smartphone users to take advantage of when they’re at your school. Think of it as a coupon for anyone with a smartphone that ONLY works when they’re standing physically at your school. You get three types of deals to choose from, each of which serves a different purpose: a single deal (check-in once, get the deal), a multi-check-in deal (check in a certain number of times, THEN receive the deal), or a group check-in deal (a certain number of people must all check-in at once, then they all get the deal). Detailing the advantages and limitations of each is an article unto itself, but do note that you can only have one active check-in deal at a time. Choose your type of deal, fill out the form fields, and then let everyone know about the deal. A favorite of mine is to offer a small discount – say $5 to $10 – off the regular price of a multi-week intro program. The customer feels (justly) that they’re getting an even better bargain, plus when they take advantage of the deal, they’re sharing it with all of their friends! That’s a good deal for both of you!

Be sure to check out part 3 of this series, where I’ll explain how you can encourage people to visit your Facebook page and more ways to insert your own Social Marketing messages into other peoples’ pages in a friendly, constructive way.

Mike De Lucia is a writer, accomplished business executive, and martial arts enthusiast. Mike is currently the Director of Business Operations for Five Star Martial Arts in North Syracuse, NY. His martial arts background includes dabbling in Tae Kwon Do, Aikido, Iaido, Goju-Ryu, and Kenpo Karate, which he practices along with his wife and children. Mike blogs at www.virtualvellum.com.

Facebook Secrets!

2011-05-09T06:00:00.001-04:00

This series of mine recently appeared on the Martial Arts Business System page.

Three amazing tips and five incredible tricks to amaze your friends and impress your customers
Part 1 of 3

Getting on Facebook is easy. Leveraging it to grow and market your business can be tough, though – especially because Facebook is often-changing and not always clearly documented. I’ve put together some of my favorite tips and related tricks – skills I’ve learned doing Facebook-based social marketing on a daily basis – that make my job easier and more successful.

Tip #1 – Business Pages are for Businesses
First up, you MUST have a Business page. This isn’t a trick, it’s just a fact, but it leads to a trick and it’s insanely important. If you’re using a “personal page” as your business, you’re in violation of Facebook’s policies and could be shut down at any time. Think they’ll never find you? Do you have competitors? Because there’s nothing to stop your competitors from outing you to the Facebook police. Besides, business pages are so far superior to personal pages for social marketing it’s just crazy not to use one.

For instance, did you know there’s a 5000-person limit on personal pages? Fan pages are unlimited (and you WANT that to be a problem, don’t you? You WANT 5000+ fans all generating leads and “buzz” about your school, right?). You get to add applications to your fan page, too – including a “Landing” or “Welcome” page that can even have embedded functionality – that means it can be used as a lead-generation tool! Personal pages cannot do that! Also, Business pages count for SEO (search-engine optimization) purposes, which means they’re growing your “Brand” on the internet. Personal pages don’t do that, either.

“But Mike,” you might say, “I already have a Personal page that I’ve worked hard on over the years. I’ve got lots of Friends, pictures, videos. It’s already the face of my business. I can’t just give that up!” All true. Luckily, you don’t have to.

Trick #1 - Migrate Your Personal Page
It’s time to get you off that personal page of yours and move you to a full-featured Business Page – without losing your hard-earned “friends” or all of your content. When it comes to Facebook secrets, this one’s about as secret as they come.

First step – download all of your Facebook account’s information. Go to “Account” in the upper-right, then “Account Settings” and click “Learn” next to where it says “Download your Information.” Click the “Download” button, then click it again in the box that pops up. It may take a while to receive your email from Team Facebook, but once they’ve gathered your data, packed it up, and asked you to verify your identity, they’ll send you a compressed “zip” file with all your data including all of your posts. It’s important that you complete this process, including receiving the file, before you continue with your migration, or it may (will) be lost.

Next step – the actual page migration. It’s pretty easy, actually, and all begins on this page: https://www.facebook.com/help/?faq=19691. Click where it says “here” and proceed to set up your new business page. When it’s done, you’ll have all the functionality of a business page at your disposal. Remember, this process is irreversible, and be sure to set your own personal Facebook account as an administrator. Which actually leads me to…

Trick #2 – Posting on Your Own Business Page
Another poorly-documented feature of Facebook is the ability to turn off the requirement that business page admins always post “AS” that page. Sometimes you want to post as the “face” of your business, but other times it makes more sense to post as yourself. To have the choice, you simply have to uncheck a box in your page’s settings. Click the “Edit page” button in the upper-right of your page, then choose “Your Settings” from the menu at the right. Uncheck the box next to “Always comment and post on your page as” and save your changes. Voila! You now have the choice to post either as “Sensei Napoli” or as “Five Star Martial Arts” – you’ll see a link on the right-hand side of your page that lets you “Use Facebook as Five Star Martial Arts.”

In parts 2 and 3 of this series, I’ll explain how to make your business a Facebook Place, with all the advantages thereof, and I’ll explain how Tagging isn’t just for graffiti artists anymore – it’s an integral part of a thorough Facebook Social Marketing Strategy!

Mike De Lucia is a writer, accomplished business executive, and martial arts enthusiast. Mike is currently the Director of Business Operations for Five Star Martial Arts in North Syracuse, NY. His martial arts background includes dabbling in Tae Kwon Do, Aikido, Iaido, Goju-Ryu, and Kenpo Karate, which he practices along with his wife and children. Mike blogs at www.virtualvellum.com.

[Guitar] Back in Black!

2011-05-06T06:00:00.001-04:00

I'm back, baby! In more ways than one, really.

I haven't played my guitar in about six weeks. I know, for shame. I just wasn't feeling it anymore. Part of it was stress - I really did have a lot going on for the last month, and it was hard to pull myself away from my computer. That's a convenient excuse, which is my favorite kind. Having to work for an excuse to slack off defeats the whole point of the excuse. Let's see, what else?

Oh yeah, my son and I got in a little bit of a snit. We had been practicing together every morning, five days a week, for nearly two years. We got through the initial struggle to learn the basic chords. We got through the Monday-morning whining session when he'd reliably break down in tears every Monday morning. We got through the achy fingers and learning the individual notes and the scales and so much else. But after a while, I found that when we were practicing together, I'd be playing and I'd look over to find him just sitting there daydreaming. He played fine when I wasn't there with him, but if I was, forget it - he spent ten or fifteen of the thirty minutes slacking off. It drove me nuts. We'd argue. I'd stomp off because I knew if I wasn't there he'd play fine. I always told myself I'd go back and practice later in the day, I just never did. Eventually, I stopped trying to practice with him in the mornings at all, and I still never practiced in the afternoons. I just quit playing. Let's see, what else?

Oh yeah, I still suck. I mean, even before I took a break, I still sucked. After nearly two years of playing, I still don't "feel" the instrument. I can't just "play." Everything I do on the guitar involves intensive thought and analysis and concentration. That drives me nuts. I'm ready for my muse to just wash over me, infusing me with the skill and ability to pick up the instrument and just go - playing whatever I want to play by ear, without thinking about it and without working at it for months at a time to play just a single part of a single song. I'm kind of sick of sucking.

So that pretty well sums up why I stopped playing for a while - stress, conflict, and intense mediocrity. They conspired together to wear me down, to defeat me, to do what the previous 21 months hadn't been able to do - get me to stop playing.

Well screw that. I'm back! I utterly slacked off on our previous assignment - a part of Bad Company's "Can't Get Enough" that I should have really been in to, but just wasn't, plus a part of Van Halen's "Runnin' with the Devil." The problem I had with "Runnin'" was two-fold - I couldn't play it, which was a big part. But I also didn't know what song it was - part of our assignment had been to figure it out, and I utterly failed to place it. The two were related, of course. With tablature, there's no indication of the tempo of the song, so you only know which notes to play, but not when to play them. Thus, you pretty well have to know how the tune goes or it's near-impossible to figure out. So that was a part of why we played badly. And as a result of playing so badly, I couldn't figure out what song it was supposed to be. Which in turn led to us playing it badly. It was a vicious cycle of sucking. Now that I know what it was, I want to go back and try it again.

Which is to say that, yeah, I'm back. I'm back into it, I feel like playing again, and I'm going to try to work through any issues with my son not playing diligently enough while I'm there. So what changed?

Well, first off I finished a major project that had been absorbing a TON of my time for the last month, so I'm genuinely not as busy (though I'd be busier if I got back to writing my book, but I wouldn't be doing that at the time of day when we practice). I actually think that's a big part of it. But the other big part is the new music we got this week. We're currently working on Ozzy Osbourne and Randy Rhodes's "Crazy Train," which is cool as hell! And as if that weren't awesome enough, we're ALSO working on AC/DC's "Back in Black"! Hence the title of this thread.

So yeah, I'm stoked. Partly because these are fantastic tunes that I like, but partly because I CAN ACTUALLY PLAY THEM! I mean, not great, but well enough. I can see where I could actually master them (well, the parts we're working on, at least) with some diligent practice. And apparently the spectre of potential success is what it takes to get me going. I'm not a big fan of struggling and then failing. It's a major turn-off. But struggling and succeeding? That I can handle. So I'm back in black, riding the crazy train. And loving it!

[Karate] Aikido Seminar #2

2011-05-04T06:00:00.001-04:00

Technically, I don't know what number Aikido seminar this was for me - I'm positive I went to at least four of them back in the early 1990s because I can remember training with Sugano Sensei (Sugano Shihan at the time of his very sad passing last year) twice, Yamada Shihan at least once, and a big guy with a mustache whose name I've forgotten. I suspect there were as many as two other seminars I attended and have simply forgotten, but those four I remember for sure.

To digress further, I think I've mentioned before that I'm baffled when I try to remember how long I spent training in Aikido. It seems like it was around a year, which would be consistent with having attended that number of seminars. Yet I only tested a single time - for 5th Kyu - and that test is usually administered after about 60 days of training, which would be around 6-7 months. Even assuming I was a terrible student (which would hurt my pride deeply, but wouldn't actually surprise me), I should have been ready to test around then, since I often went to class quite a bit more often than twice per week. So how freaking long DID I train for?? I just don't recall.

Well, it doesn't really matter. What does matter is that I was able to attend Collins Smith Sensei's seminar last November, and then on Saturday I attended Irvin Faust Sensei's seminar as well. And if that weren't enough, I've also taken two actual Aikido classes in the last few weeks as well.

Saturday's seminar was really unique. Well, it was for me, anyway. I don't know - maybe Faust Sensei teaches like this all the time. You see, in Aikido you typically take turns with your partner, each of you performing a technique four times as the Nage, then receiving those same four techniques as the Uke. The Uke's job is to be a reasonably compliant partner, providing just enough resistance for the technique to be properly executed. The Nage's job is to do the technique without injuring the Uke or throwing them where another Uke is about to fall. Only one technique is generally performed at a time.

Faust Sensei mixed this up, though. For the first hour, we performed variations on a series of techniques. The Nage would begin with Nikyo, then move on to Sankyo, followed by Kotegaeshi, and ending with Shihonage. Actually, it didn't always end with Shihonage - after a while we added an Iriminage throw as the final technique. So that's four - or five! - techniques all done together, one after the next, alternating hands. The Uke's job was just to reach toward the Nage as fast as they could after each technique so the Nage could perform the next one in the series.

It was actually a really great way to practice these fundamental Aikido techniques, it was just unlike anything I'd ever seen done before outside of Rondori (where multiple attackers act as Uke to a single Nage, taking turns attacking with whatever attack they desire while the Nage adapts and selects a suitable response).

Faust Sensei was throwing all kinds of stuff at us that I'd never seen or just didn't remember. I admit, I was confused and frustrated - not so much at my inability to execute the techniques (I give myself a pass since I'm way beyond rusty), but at my sheer bafflement when I tried to comprehend them. I would watch him do the technique and come away utterly confused. Sometimes I'd even practice it for a while and still be utterly confused. It was a very humbling experience, and I'm not a big fan of being humbled and frustrated. When that happens, my gut instinct is to give up. I felt those rumblings stirring within me on Saturday. "This is too hard. I don't get it. I should go sit and watch instead of bumbling around here looking - and feeling - like a fool." It was REALLY tempting to just give up. I'm awesome at giving up. I wonder sometimes if I'm part French (Je plaisante!). I didn't, though. I stuck it out. I stayed with it. After a while, Faust Sensei changed the format and then things did get somewhat easier.

You see, for at least the fourth and final hour, he had us in lines, with a single Nage and everyone else taking turns as Uke. It was a constant barrage of attacks - each Nage got to perform the technique around ten times in rapid succession. I still frequently found that after those ten times, I was no closer to mastering the technique or even being sure I was doing it kind of correctly. Being the guy up there facing that whole line of Aikidoka was fairly intimidating, but it was actually better than being one-on-one. Plus you got to rest while standing in line, which was really welcome after several hours of near-continuous Aikido.

That was another big plus for me - in the past, I've left seminars and even classes feeling completely drained and ready to collapse. Then I've gone home, stiffened up, and literally spent the next four or five days barely able to walk, hobbling around grunting and occasionally crying out in pain. I remember when Collins Smith Sensei's seminar was done, I collapsed flat-out on the mat and just lay there for a while. Several people even came over to see if I was okay.

This seminar, however, I completely lost track of time. I literally misplaced an entire hour, so that when the seminar was finished and we were lined up, kneeling in seiza for Faust Sensei to say goodbye, I was sure we still had another whole session still to go. And I was looking forward to it! I was ready for more, and a bit disappointed to find that there wasn't any. I remember that feeling. It's the feeling I USED to get back in the old days, when I was a young, fit, enthusiastic college kid instead of an old, flabby, worn out man. It's the feeling I'd get when I'd attend a seminar with Sugano or Yamada Shihan back in 1991 at the OLD Erie Boulevard dojo. Maybe I was channeling my Ki or just catching a second wind, but it felt damn good. I'm looking forward to more.

[Karate] Five Star Martial Arts 2.0!

2011-05-02T06:00:00.002-04:00

For the last month, I've been intensely focused on helping my good friends at Five Star Martial Arts take their business to the next level. It's incredible how much we've gotten done in just a few short weeks, and today is the official launch of Phase Two of their awesome Karate and fitness school.

One key component of Five Star 2.0 is that they now have an official website! They've wanted one for a long time, but getting the right team in place to create it and developing a cohesive vision that really captured their desire for a centralized web presence can be a little tricky. In the end, my lovely wife developed the site from soup to nuts, based only on a static mock-up in Photoshop, including some graphic design, photo editing, CSS, PHP scripting, server administration, and HTML. I had the job of writing all the copy. Luckily for us, we both had some solid background in our respective tasks, though it was the first time we'd worked together to build a commercial site from the ground up without a team of IT and Marketing departments at our backs. It was pretty cool, and everybody's super-happy with how it turned out!

Another aspect of Five Star 2.0 is the addition of two new fitness programs. Five Star now offers both Hatha Yoga as well as the ONLY Certified Russian Kettlebell classes in the whole Central New York region! Again, this took a while to pull together. We started reaching out to and interviewing Yoga instructors months ago, but it took time to find just the right fit. Meanwhile, I was contacting instructors in other fitness styles, and had the great good fortune to connect with the ONLY HKC-Certified Russian Kettlebell instructor within 40 miles! Russian Kettlebell is a hit all over the world for a fast, intense workout that combines strength-training and cardio in one workout. Plus, my wife loves it so I've gotten to see first-hand how quickly you can see the benefits.

On top of that, there's been a ton of search-engine optimization (more to come), Facebook improvements (we now have all the features of a "Place" page right on our Facebook "Business" page, including a check-in deal!), an active Twitter account that's already over 30 followers in just a couple weeks (not so hot if you're a bigtime Hollywood celebrity, but not bad for a little dojo in North Syracuse!!), and so much more I can't remember it all.

Plus, I set up our domain, including web-hosting and various email addresses, meaning that Five Star's owners and employees can finally have their own custom email addresses. It's not really a big deal, but it's not something anybody had even told them was possible and one more item on a fairly lengthy checklist for the month of April.

On top of all of that, we've got our first LivingSocial deal going live today, too! After the way our Groupon deal went completely ballistic, it'll be interesting to see what happens with this one. It's sure to be a smaller response, but we're anxious to see it. It's also one of the first (possibly THE first) LivingSocial Family deals offered in Syracuse.

Next up - Seminars! I'm making arrangements to bring some fantastic seminars to our dojo this summer and fall and I can't wait to announce them. I'm very much hoping to connect our school to the rest of the CNY martial arts community, make some great friendships, and share some knowledge.

I'm frankly amazed at how much we've accomplished so quickly. Of course, I've hardly seen my wife this month, but it's going to be an awesome thing when we start seeing the response. If you haven't already, definitely pop over to Five Star Martial Arts and let me know what you think. The "News and Events" page goes into more detail about some of what we're rolling out.

Now, off to work on more great stuff!

Where's Mike?

2011-04-29T06:00:00.000-04:00

So where the heck has this blog been, lately?

Yes, I know, it's been completely and utterly absent. My sincere apologies - I've been swamped. I shouldn't even be writing this now - there's something much more important I ought to be working on. I'll tell you all about it on Monday, but for today just know that I have not forgotten about you, my loyal (if relatively few) readers!

I can tell you that I am currently NOT working on my novel, and yes, it's pissing me off. It's a conscious choice and one that I can live with, but my plan had always been to cut back on my writing for a while, not to stop altogether. I'm expecting that in a few more weeks I'll be able to scale back and then I can get back to work. My re-write of Chapter 9 didn't end up being all that successful, so I suppose I'll need to start there once again and try to get it right. Then on to chapters 10, 11, 12, 13, and 14 for sure. I think Chapter 16 is in pretty good shape, and I think Chapter 15 is pretty close to done already (it's already been extensively re-written). At the moment, it's probably reasonable to hope that by July/August I'll actually be writing new material. My estimates are always too optimistic, however, so we'll see.

I will say that my karate training is proceeding nicely - we're well into our Blue Belt material, on the way to Green Belt. In addition, Sensei Mehter kindly invited me to train with him at Aikido of Central New York the last two Thursdays, which was fantastic! I really love Aikido, and I'm enjoying seeing how much I remember. There's vastly more that I've forgotten, of course, I just don't enjoy that quite as much. There's a seminar on Saturday with Irvin Faust Sensei of Albany which I'm definitely attending as well (I'm skipping my son's dojo birthday party, though, so I'm a good Aikidoka but a bad Dad. There was just no way to be good at both on this particular day).

There's more to come - I'm very much looking forward to sharing some of my work and accomplishments with you here. I very much hope I'll find time to do so next week.

[Garden] Till Friday

2011-04-22T06:00:00.001-04:00

I haven't been posting much this week - sorry. The kids are off from school and I've got a fair bit of work going on that I'm trying to keep up with. I'm also delving into my D&D materials whenever possible, just getting things organized, learning what I have, and looking for stuff to adapt for the kids adventure. Creating one magic item and a big spellbook actually took me quite a bit of time.

But I HAD intended to write about last Friday's adventure - the roto-tiller. I ended up renting a "mid-tine" tiller from Home Depot for about $45. Mid-tine tillers have a wheel in front for hauling the thing around and a spike in back to help anchor it, but the whole machine really rests right on the tiller portion. As you can imagine, this means that the person controlling the device has to constantly fight all of the tiller's torque as it tries to propel itself completely out of the garden. And who the hell had the bright idea to put the throttle lever right OVER one of the handles. Ever time I found myself struggling with the thing, I'd end up knocking the throttle all the way up (for a jolt like bessie the mule suddenly deciding to go chase a bunny) or all the way down so the thing would make noises like it wanted to stall. That was fun.

I remember my father tilling my grandfather's garden every year. There was far less grunting and swearing from what I recall. Maybe that's just my dad - he's always been a strapping man, and maybe he just hauled his tiller around with no problem. Or maybe he just complains less than I do - that's almost certainly true. But I also think he probably had a front or rear-tine tiller. I mean, that was 30 years ago, and it's not as if they made them any lighter or easier to use back then. No, I bet Dad had a tiller where most of the weight was on a set of wheels, and all you had to do was push down on the back end to get it to dig down into the soil and do its job.

I actually would have liked a rear-tine, but it wasn't meant to be. Aside from being more expensive, I'm pretty sure the rear-tine wouldn't have fit in my minivan. So mid-tine it would have to be.

Getting it home and out to the garden was surprisingly easy. My wife helped me lower it out of the van, then I just walked it back and started it up. Actually using the thing took some practice and was quite a workout. I'd figured it out pretty well by the time I was done, but to really get it to bite deeply and chew up the earth took some muscle. I had to anchor the hook in the back and then force it down into the soil, then I had to plant my feet and haul back on the tiller to keep it from running away. Three hours of that left me sweaty and tired, but with a well-tilled garden.

I actually made two passes with the tiller to loosen the soil (and to get the full width of the three plots that I have), then I went through a third time after adding the manure I'd bought. A note on the manure - I had 12 cubic feet of manure/humus mix that I'd bought, and I could have used easily 3x - 5x that much. Instead of adding a two-inch thick layer and mixing it into the soil, I basically just sprinkled a thin dusting over my garden. I still mixed it in, but it wasn't nearly as much as Scott's was recommending. It'll have to do, however - I'd spent $50 on the manure, plus almost $50 on the tiller, and on top of what I spent on soil, fencing, and mulch two years ago to build the dumb thing, I'm way beyond any hope of ROI at this point.I have to cut my losses at some point.

Hopefully we'll get some of the more frost-friendly vegetables planted this coming weekend, then watch the little darlings grow. The pay-off isn't in grocery savings, I'm afraid, but getting fresh peas, lettuce, and other veggies straight out of my backyard is pretty great.

[TV] Game of Thrones on HBO

2011-04-18T06:00:00.004-04:00

Last night was the premier of HBO's Game of Thrones, a series based on the eponymous novel by George R. R. Martin - the first in his series A Song of Ice and Fire. I've been looking forward to seeing it for some time, to the point that I actually subscribed to HBO just to watch it. I've never done that for any other HBO or pay-cable TV series - not The Sopranos, not Rome, not Spartacus: Blood and Sand, none of them. But I did it for this.

Martin's series is an amazing piece of work, and living up to it required an incredible effort. Exceeding all expectations doesn't come easy, but I'll be damned if Game of Thrones didn't do exactly that. I can't think offhand of any piece of television that I enjoyed more or found to be more visually and technically impressive. A truly amazing piece of work. HBO can quote me on that, if they're so inclined (hey, a man can dream).

There were, of course, concessions to time and the medium. Not every shade and nuance of a novel can ever bed translated perfectly to the screen. Things were cut or added or changed, but never in a way that made you wonder, "was that really necessary?" We see Tyrion, the dwarf brother of the queen, cavorting in a whorehouse. That wasn't in the novel, but establishing his character is critical - he's one of the most important characters in the series, after all. In true "show, don't tell" fashion, we get to see exactly how this little man lives his life, so we can understand him clearly later on. I can live with that.

But the look of the thing! That's the real magic here. TV is a visual medium, and the key to the success of Game of Thrones was that everything looked so incredible. It's so difficult for anything to compete with the vision a reader gets in their imagination when reading a novel, yet somehow Game of Thrones managed to deliver the characters, costumes, locations, and sets in a way that it was easy to believe I was really looking inside the walls of Winterfell.

Game of Thrones has managed to capture the feel of the novel as well. I felt the "starkness" of the North and its ruling family, the Starks. I felt the cold emptiness of the Haunted Forest beyond The Wall. I felt the barbarism, the animal spirit of the Dothraki khalassar and their Khal, Drogo. Most of all, I recognized every minute of the film. It was a faithful, honest, meticulous adaptation that brought the novel to life, artfully sidestepping the pitfalls that are so prevalent in any attempt to translate a brilliant book to the screen.

Bravo to HBO for producing this. It surely couldn't have been done anywhere else. It's too graphic for basic cable, to epic for the big screen. Only HBO had the wherewithal to bring A Song of Ice and Fire to life. I'm thrilled beyond reason that they not only did so, but did so in a grand, majestic, impressive way. Now I just have to suffer through each subsequent week between episodes. The next couple of months are going to be rivers of pain interspersed with hours of gladness and joy. I cannot wait. Winter is coming!

[TV] Winter is Coming - Game of Thrones on HBO

2011-04-14T06:00:00.002-04:00

I went and did it - I subscribed to HBO specifically so I could watch this series. That's not something I've ever done before that I can remember. There have been some great-sounding shows on Pay TV. I remember when The Sopranos was all the rage, for instance. I didn't watch it because I didn't have HBO and I wasn't interested in getting it. I've still never seen that show. Or True Blood. Or the Tudors. Or Rome. I could go on. Oh, I've never seen Sex and the City, but I consider that to be a really good thing.

But Game of Thrones? Hell yeah, I was going to sign up for that. The first novel of George R. R. Martin's consistently brilliant series is a magnificent merger of complex characters, vicious political intrigue, and breathtaking imagery. Seeing all that come alive is too good to miss.

I've actually had the pleasure of enjoying a performance of this series already. Roy Dotrice read the first three novels of the series for the audiobooks and he was absolutely incredible. He deftly changed from one character voice to the next, making each unique and believable, while even weaving together similar accents for characters from nearby regions. It was an impressive display of voice acting. I'm baffled how he managed to remember them all. I used to listen to these audiobooks when I'd drive to work in Ithaca and on my all-too-frequent drives to the home office in Connecticut. I think I've listened to the whole series at least three or four times, and I've read it another three or four times. Wow - have I actually gone through these massive books as many as six or eight times??

Oh yeah, and I'm currently re-reading the series, since the fifth book, A Dance with Dragons, comes out in July. So I guess that will be seven reads. Or eight. Or nine. I can't keep track. But it's THAT good. There's nothing else of this size that I've read that many times, including The Lord of the Rings (which I believe I've read about four times, but even including The Hobbit it's not as big as Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire). It's so good, that I even forgive Martin when it's taken him five years to finish each of the last couple of novels. I'll go back to grumbling about it if the next one takes as long, then I'll forgive him again when it's out.

All I've seen to this point are previews, but I've seen quite a few of them and they look fantastic. The actors are spot-on for how their characters were described, and include the likes of Sean Bean, Lena Headey, Peter Dinklage, and Jason Momoa, to name just a few. Martin has been involved in the development of the series and seems extremely happy with how it's turned out. That's a pretty good endorsement, since most writers are very picky about how their work is adapted.

So I'm sold. I'm in. I'm going to be right there on Sunday night for the premiere, and then each following Sunday until the first season has aired. As to whether I'll keep HBO... we'll see.

2011 - The Garden Strikes Back

2011-04-13T06:00:00.001-04:00

My garden has always been around 60% successful at best. Last year I don't think it was even that high. I can usually eke out a bunch of peas and beans with no problem. Lettuce grows okay. Spinach is hit-or-miss - when I grew it in a pot on the deck it was fine, but in the garden it sprouted and immediately went to seed. I'm hit-or-miss on beets, too. They were terrific one year, then small and stunted the next. Carrots always end up stunted and misshapen, and we end up feeding them to the guinea pigs. Every attempt we've made at cabbage, squash, zucchini, watermelon and pumpkin has been an utter waste of time and effort.

Now, granted, I tend to lose interest in the garden, especially the hard part like weeding regularly. But still, I keep at it, hoping. Hoping.

This year, I'm pinning my hopes on the theory that the soil isn't being properly loosened and fertilized. Part of my rationale is from the beets, which did okay the year that the dirt was brand new, and less well the following year. But who knows, really? My neighbor down the street seems to grow all this stuff just fine in the same soil and weather conditions, so I'm going to follow her example and see what happens. I'm going to invest.

That's right - in an effort to ensure that my garden never, ever produces vegetables unless they cost orders of magnitude more than I'd spend for them in the grocery store, I'm going to pump more money into my garden again this year. I'm going to rent a roto-tiller for $40 and I'm going to buy a bunch of manure for... gah, a lot. When I priced it on Tuesday, it looked like I could easily spend anywhere from $50 to $90 on bagged manure. I'm sure there's a much cheaper way to buy it, I just don't know if I feel like hunting around.

So that's my target for this week - to get the necessary fertilizer and the roto-tiller, till the soil in the garden once to loosen it and then again to mix in the fertilizer, then plant my seeds. As god as my witness, I'll likely have no better luck this year than I've had before. We'll see.

Juggle Faster!

2011-04-12T06:00:00.000-04:00

I've got rather a lot of balls in the air at the moment. Luckily they're not axes or flaming torches or anything, but still I'm not getting many articles written. Sorry about that!

Some of the things I'm up to include:
* Continuing to practice the little bit of Iaido I learned last month. I'm REALLY excited to finally be learning this ancient Japanese art (or, at least, an art that can trace its lineage to Ancient Japan, whether or not it looks exactly like what a Samurai would have done in his spare time).
* Trying to get back on the weight-loss wagon after taking a couple of weeks off. This is okay, though - I'm not gaining back any of my lost weight, and I'm not in a hurry. Slow and steady will win this race.
* Working on some work-related projects that are going quite well.
* Completely changing big chunks of the D&D adventure I'm running for my kids. I decided that I needed to add a more impressive bad guy to the end, and set him up to be a recurring villain. I also needed to modify some of the magic items because there were more than I wanted to have in my game. As of right now, it's fairly likely that the bad guy will make off with most of the better ones.
* Trying and failing to get some writing done.

That plus the usual family stuff is accounting for basically all of my time at this point. I'll try to get something written this week, but I can't be sure when.

[Karate] Ipponme Mae

2011-04-08T06:00:00.000-04:00

First off, before anybody freaks out, I'm continuing to categorize my Iaido studies under "Karate" for no particular reason other than that I've been classifying all of my martial arts articles under that category. I suppose I could have used a broader category like [Martial Arts], but at the time I started writing about the subject I was really only focused on Kenpo and Goju-Ryu styles, so [Karate] seemed appropriate. I have, however, recently added labels to my blog, so if you're looking for particular subject matter, you can drill down by selecting the link for "Iaido" or "Aikido," or you can see all of my martial arts related articles by clicking "karate." So that's all it is - just a category for the convenience of people trying to sort through my articles (which cover a wide array of topics. Probably too many for most people). It doesn't reflect my opinion or definition of what constitutes "karate" or any other style of martial arts.

Regular readers will recall that I traveled to Ottawa last month for a seminar in Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū conducted by Sensei Robert Davis. The wonderful thing about seminars, for me, has always been the exposure to new information, things I'd never seen or done before, or just differences in how the knowledge is taught. Sometimes, as with Iaido, the skills are all new. Other times, as with some of the Aikido seminars I attended years ago, it was a chance to practice familiar techniques with different people, or to gain insights into them simply because they were being taught by somebody different.

The one thing I hate about seminars is that afterward I feel the new knowledge I've learned - skills that seemed natural and obvious to me at the time - quickly leaking out of my mind and fading away. Aaaargh, I hate that so much. I want that knowledge. I want to keep it. I want to use it to refine and perfect my technique. I want to have it to use. Losing it really aggravates me.

For that reason, I've begun to think that it might have been for the best that this first Iaido seminar was only three hours long. We learned a lot in that short time, but not so much as to be completely overwhelming. I wish I could tell you the techniques we learned, but my auditory memory is terrible and without seeing them written down, the names flitted away, lost to me. I remember the techniques, though. Or at least I think I do.

We started with some basic stances, the drawing of the sword, the resheathing of the sword, and chiburi, which is the shaking off of blood from the blade. Then we learned two standing waza. In the first, we'd take three steps forward, stopping with the left foot in a half-step before taking a full step forward with the right foot as you draw and make the initial cut with the blade. In the second, the left foot continues on through, and the initial strike is made with the left foot forward. Both follow the first (horizontal) strike with an overhead strike (we used to call the barehanded overhead chop a "shomenuchi" in Aikido. I'm betting it has a different name when performed with a sword, but I don't know what the proper term is, so we'll just stick to English), then a chuburi, and a resheathing of the sword.

I'm not certain I'm doing these techniques 100% perfectly. Well, let me rephrase that - I'm positive that I'm NOT doing them 100% perfectly. Probably more like 10% if I'm lucky, at least in terms of the details that are so important to proper Iaido. What I mean is that I may be making gross mistakes. For instance, I know that in some of the waza we practiced, we dropped a knee as we resheathed the sword. I'm positive we did that in the techniques that started in seiza (kneeling) posture. But I cannot remember whether we also did it when the technique was entirely standing. So for now I'm only bending the knee on seiza-based techniques like Ipponme Mae.

Which brings me to the other set of waza we learned - four different techniques all performed from the seiza position. Each of the four is performed facing a different direction to begin with, but you always end up attacking a target who is to the front. Which is to say, in those positions where you're facing left, right, or to the rear, you must turn yourself because the enemy is always in the same place.

Now I'm not sure if ALL of these variations count as ipponme mae, but I think they might. Regardless, the front-facing waza performed from seiza is definitely ipponme mae. I like ipponme mae quite a bit, and I read somewhere that "all of Iaido is contained in Ipponme Mae." I don't know whether that's true, but it surely seems like a great place to start. I've also read that many Iaido students learn and perform nothing but Ipponme Mae for months when they first begin to learn the art.

I've taken down the cheap piece of crap decorative samurai sword from the rack over my writing computer. It's a poor-quality replica of a real sword, and I noticed after using it for a bit that the whole thing has a bit of a rightward curve from the handle to the tip of the blade. But it's roughly the weight and feel of a proper Iaito blade, and it has a saya (sheath), so I've put it to work. At least three or four times a week, I take that sword to the dojo and I practice what little I know of Iaido. It's my sincere hope that I'm not setting too many bad habits in stone that will need to be chipped away later on, but I'm determined to keep as much of that knowledge as I possibly can. When it's time to learn more Iaido, I hope to be ready to correct some of my errors and absorb more of this precious and all-too-rare knowledge.

[D&D] The Mystery of the Missing Mage (part 5)

2011-04-07T06:00:00.003-04:00

My kids made it to the dungeon's level 3 the other day, which is primarily a huge natural cavern that's become the home to a tribe of goblins. The goblin guards on level 2 were dead, as were the orc guards and orc families on level 2 and 1. Now they'd reached the heart of the community. Within the enormous cavern are many ramshackle huts that serve as homes for the goblin families. There's also a large stone circle surrounded by torches and braziers that gives the appearance of being an altar of some sort. Beyond that is a fine home - many orders of magnitude nicer than the hovels scattered about the cavern - raised high above the rest of the cavern on a tall stone platform. And near the center of the space, the object of their quest - Heather, the missing farmgirl.

Dozens of goblins of all ages and genders came and went through the cavern.

For reasons that aren't entirely clear to me, my daughter the rogue decided to sneak off and backstab some. It actually worked pretty well for a short time, but there were so many goblins, there's simply no way she wasn't going to be seen. And so she was. The alarm was raised, and suddenly 50 goblins are descending upon our intrepid heroes, while a handful race up the wide stairs to the manse. To her credit, my daughter guessed correctly that they were going to alert the chieftain of this enclave, who happens to be a half-goblin, half-orc shaman. I have no idea whether half-orc/half-goblin combinations are even possible, but it's in the module so I left it.

Remarkably (and with a small amount of indulgence from ye olde Dungeon Master), the kids managed to rescue the maiden and escape the clutches of the goblins, discovering and slipping away through a concealed passage that the goblins had long since forgotten about. Now, yeah, I had to arrange the goblins in such a way that they players had a shot at getting across the cavern. But the kids did the heavy lifting. They made the plan to get the girl, they coordinated their efforts, and they recognized that the one unknown feature of the caverns - a wooden structure that turned out to be abandoned stables (why there were stables three levels underground, I haven't a clue. I try to make my dungeons a bit more organic, including things like ease of egress, sources of water, storage for food, chimneys (natural or otherwise) for smoke, and other necessities. This dungeon largely seems to lack those, and puts some odd things in places where I can't explain them. Meh - what can I say? It's a decent dungeon and I didn't have time to make one myself. You'll recall that my kids rolled up characters on a Saturday and demanded we start to play on Sunday. I hadn't even read the whole thing at that point!) - ahem, I digress there parenthetically. Back to the stables - and it so happened that the module called for the entrance to level 4 to be concealed in those very stables.

And I'd be remiss if I didn't note that my youngest son's warrior got in some pretty decent rolls, hacking his way through a swarm of goblins while his siblings rescued the girl and busted through the concealed opening. They made a great team, made some thoughtful decisions, and the dice were reasonably kind to them.

So now they've fled through a dark, deeply-sloped passageway to a whole new level of rooms and corridors, barring a thick door behind them and hopefully buying some badly-needed time to escape the goblins. Next - they explore the lost chambers of an evil sorcerer and perhaps even solve the mystery of the missing mage.

[Karate] In-House Tournament

2011-04-06T06:00:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday, Five Star Martial Arts held its first in-house tournament. By the time all was done, we were there for over eight hours, but everybody seemed to have a great time.

I've never been to a tournament before, in-house or otherwise. They used to be really big back in the day. When my wife and her mom were doing karate in the 1980s, there were several of them a year in this area, and the Tearney's and the LaVallee's camps would square off against each other at all of them. Sometime in the 1990s, tournaments became far less common in Central New York. One theory I've heard is that everybody decided they could make more money hosting their own events than by sending their students to somebody else's tournament. I don't know whether that's the case or not, but our Senseis at Five Star have indicated that they're looking to try to arrange for tournament opportunities for their students and for others in the area. I spoke to Carlos Tearney last month, and he said the same thing. I think that's cool.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not interested in competing myself, and I don't really care much whether my kids do. But if they want to, I'd like them to have the opportunity. But I think the real value is in breaking out of this mindset here in Central New York where each school does their own thing, by themselves, with no integration with others. That's a real shame - I think there's huge value in martial artists getting to see what else is out there. Getting to see that other styles do things differently, and getting a sense of how those differences manifest. I know there have been a handful of seminars here in the last year, too, and I think that's even better - a chance to really learn something new and different than what's taught at your school daily, either because of the content or just because it's being taught by someone new. Local schools like Aikido of CNY, Tai Kai Brazilian Jiu Jitsu, and Syracuse Martial Arts Academy are more than willing to hold seminars that are open to any and all. I know Five Star wants to do the same.

So it's begun with the first small steps - an in-house tournament to get Five Star's students familiar with and comfortable with the whole idea of tournaments. I'm looking forward to seeing what's to come.

[D&D] Alchemy

2011-03-31T06:00:00.004-04:00

I mentioned in Tuesday's article that I thought I probably had the Non-Weapon Proficiency description for Alchemy laying around somewhere. Well, I did and holy cow. The bloody thing is 6 pages long! Why didn't I ever try to publish this stuff? Perhaps I still should!

Here's one of my long-time criticisms about D&D - it really discouraged players from crafting the magic items that were so prevalent in the game, both by making them prevalent (so why bother - you find them just lying around) and by making it so challenging to do. A mage could write scrolls easily enough (though it didn't always work and could be expensive), but to craft anything of worth was so much trouble you were left wondering "Who the hell made all of these +1 daggers?? And then lost them!!"

I didn't ever come up with a good resolution to this. Granted, you didn't want your players finding lots of magical items lying around and THEN make their own, too. That was asking for trouble, since they'd certainly craft those items that would best work to their advantage and make them much more powerful than their level would indicate. But it always seemed like a conundrum to me - a way in which the world just didn't seem properly believable.

One way I did find to try to rectify it was through Alchemy. Potions are usually of limited usefulness in that they don't last very long, their effects usually aren't that potent, they're a hassle to carry around, they're susceptible to various types of combat damage, and of course they're single-use only. They struck me as an amazing opportunity to give the players some control over magic-item creation without knocking the game out of whack.

I didn't get to fully test my theory. I'm pretty sure I used alchemy in two different campaigns, but both were fairly short-lived so I didn't get to really see their effects, more's the pity. The proficiency, however, is a thing of beauty if I say so myself. (You may have noticed that I'm often very impressed with my own work. Yeah, you'll get no argument from me.)

It took me a bit to find time to read the whole thing, and it's not perfect. It's incomplete, for starters - I only detailed about a quarter of the potions I'd designed. But those potions are one of the coolest parts - I designed nineteen different concoctions - all of them new - and included sixteen different poisons (Type A, Type B, etc.). There are detailed descriptions for nine of the potions, a few basic numbers for another half-dozen, and brief comments for all of them that include their effects. So it's entirely playable, just not complete.

Why is Alchemy six pages long, you wonder? Six typwritten pages, single-spaced, in a 10-point font? Well, it takes two pages just for the chart of potions and the tables that I'll describe below. Two pages are taken up by the one-paragraph descriptions I wrote of each potion, such as:

Everwake – this bitter-tasting stimulant is often candied over a small fruit. It must be both boiled and melted during concoction, and burns are likely. It takes thirty minutes to mix, cook, form, and cool a batch, which can make up to 8 doses. When consumed, this mixture fends off sleep, allowing someone to continue to travel, work, guard, or perform other activities without the danger of falling asleep. Each dose lasts for 1d4 + 7 hours. When a dose wears off, the user must make a con check each hour (with a cumulative –1 penalty each hour after the first) or immediately fall asleep. If awakened, a second con check (with penalties) may be made to stay awake for that hour, but the next hour will again require a check. Any dose taken before full rest (8hrs) is obtained is considered a consecutive dose. For each consecutive dose after the second, a system shock roll is required or the user has suffered damage from the lack of sleep and the effects of the mixture. Each failure results in a loss of 1-2 points in all ability scores (with any resulting impact on hit point bonuses, available spells, etc.), plus an additional reduction in maximum HP of 10%. These effects are cumulative with each subsequent consecutive dose if the system shock roll is failed, and the effects last until a full 8 hours of unbroken sleep are received.

Again, I didn't finish descriptions for all the potions, only some of them, but you get the idea. Lastly, there are two pages describing how the proficiency actually works. It's a bit cumbersome, but given the power of the proficiency - the ability to actually create magic items (albeit ones of very limited purpose) - I needed to be sure the craft wasn't to be taken lightly. The process is fairly and deliberately cumbersome. Hence those tables I mentioned above. Besides the large one that breaks all the different potions down by level and other factors, there are two primary tables: Scarcity and Danger.

The Scarcity table is used to establish how rare the materials are for a given potion. Assuming a "standard" temperate-clime with access to woods, fields, hills, and streams, the DM uses the table to check the difficulty the player will experience in finding the necessary ingredients. He'll first determine whether or not the necessary components actually exist in the area where the Alchemist is searching, then he'll consult the table to calculate how long the character must search to find them. Eventually, there's a mechanism for the Alchemist to make a roll to figure out whether or not the necessary ingredient even exists where he's looking, so he can choose to abandon the search if appropriate.

The Danger table makes the use of this - again, quite powerful - proficiency a bit of a challenge. There is a chance - based on the level of the player and the complexity of the alchemical formula he's attempting to brew - that the character will suffer harm in the making of the concoction. The simplest potions can cause at most 1d4 damage, but the most powerful one - Witch's Salve, which allows the user to fly - is highly volatile during preparation, and can explode for as much as 6d6 damage! In fact, at 11th Level, the chance of that happening is 40%! It goes down by 5% with each subsequent level. Given that this is a proficiency used primarily by mages, who aren't known for being physically robust, the chances of death are actually quite high with some of these formulas.

Now that I've opened up the creaking tome that holds these 10-15 year-old word documents, I'm inclined to finish off the Alchemy proficiency, fleshing out the remaining potions and possibly adding a few new ones (not that they're needed, really). I still think it's a terrific idea and it seems like it would be worth the effort of finishing. Maybe I'll try to get it published, maybe I'll post it here, or maybe I'll see something shiny and wander off to do other things. You never know. You're welcome to comment here, though, if it's something you'd have an interest in seeing in some form or other.

If I get enough response to Alchemy, I might even have to go back and dig up my non-weapon proficiency for Torture. The last two campaigns I ran were, after all, evil.

[D&D] The Candlemir Campaign

2011-03-30T06:00:00.001-04:00

I've run a handful of campaigns as a Dungeon Master, and a few games that were really just single adventures. I can clearly remember running four campaigns in particular. My first real one was EPIC - high-powered characters battling to save the world. There was a "winged folk" fighter/mage (sort of like an elf with huge angel wings, a centaur who charged into battle with a lance, a paladin with artifact-level armor, and, I kid you not, a faerie dragon druid. It ran for a couple of years and was truly world-spanning in scope.

My third campaign was short-lived - a group of humanoids like goblins, orcs, etc., all trying to make their way in the world as adventurers. I don't remember why it fizzled out, it just did. My last campaign was also based around a group of evil player-characters, but it was an entirely new group of players who just didn't mesh. It fell apart within a handful of sessions (which sucks, because I had some really amazing stuff planned for that group).

In looking through my old word documents recently, I realized just how incredible my second campaign was. It was called the Candlemir campaign, because it was centered in the city of Candlemir (which I had drawn on a poster-sized sheet of paper in exacting detail). Candlemir was, unbeknownst to the players, lorded over by a silver dragon disguised as a human. As they rose in power they became trusted agents of his and, when he disappeared, it became their duty to find him. Two of the players became local lords, the third was a powerful servant of his god, highly respected within his church and by all who knew him. The players loved that campaign, and with good reason - I can say with no false modesty that I did a hell of a job on that game.

One of my goals with the Candlemir campaign was to give the players as much useful knowledge as possible so that THEY, not a random roll of the dice, could be responsible for figuring out puzzles and bringing key information to bear when needed. The challenge is often that when it comes to the right time, a player simply makes a roll against a non-weapon proficiency or a skill (like intelligence) and, if they're successful, the DM tells them precisely what they need to know. I kind of hate that. The player always knows the information is relevant and correct and they know they need to use it right then and there.

With the Candlemir campaign, I instead pre-positioned information with the PCs right at the beginning of the campaign. Huge, huge volumes of information, all based on what their character could actually know about. Some of it I knew would be useful, because I'd already mapped out a fair number of adventures (mostly from Dungeon Magazine) that I knew I was going to use sooner or later. The rest was a combination of deliberately useless data and details that I could work off of if I ever needed an adventure hook, or which might never come into play. Either way, it served to conceal the really important, useful information, hiding it in plain sight, if you will.

At the start of the game, each player received a binder containing their character sheet, any information about their special abilities, info about the world's deities and other common knowledge, and then as many as a dozen printed pages of "stuff you know." It was up to them to read, digest, and remember that "stuff," because weeks or months later, it would suddenly become relevant in the middle of a dungeon or other adventure. Then the player would suddenly shout, "Wait! I've got something about this in my notes!" followed by frantic flipping through their binder of character history and knowledge.

Sometimes I'd get really clever and split the information across two players, so they had to put their heads together. That was pretty cool. The combination of real data pulled from upcoming adventures, plus character histories (some of which contained even more useful knowledge), plus data interwoven between players, plus ersatz information wrapped like choking vines around those bits of key knowledge, all resulted in an enormous body of work. Hell, I could probably publish it if I ever put the effort into putting it together (and updated it from AD&D Second Edition to D20 or some other, modern ruleset). It was an impressive body of work if I say so myself. And I'd nearly forgotten about it until I stumbled upon it all this week.

But wait, there's more! You see, I still needed a way to add in new details when the players got to higher levels or started traveling down paths I hadn't predicted. I rectified this with the "Magic Missive" - the newsletter of the Academy of Wizardry at Utrecht, where the party's mage, Sarkhan Killoumanges, had trained. I would periodically send him this newsletter (it magically arrived in his study), and it would contain information about world events (culled from alumni of the university all over the continent), interviews, articles, and sometimes even new spells. I crafted three or four of these, and each was a significant amount of work, but hidden within them was fresh information to help my players in their adventures.

So I tip my DM hat to Candlemir - to the Reaper of Tempus, Lord Sarkhan Killoumanges, The Blue Bard, Chariah Solinahr, and Oculos the Cyclops. The campaign is fifteen years in the past, but its legacy lives on. I'll always remember it as my DM masterpiece. Perhaps someday I'll try to craft its equal for my children to play. Perhaps someday my kids will do the same, we'll see. For now, it holds a hallowed place in my heart.

[D&D] The Mystery of the Missing Mage (part 4)

2011-03-29T06:00:00.002-04:00

The kids have been doing pretty well up to this point. They've managed to all stay conscious despite having mostly single-digit hit points and THACO scores at or close to 20. They've started to get the hang of some of their abilities - the mage has burned off all of his spells, the thief checks every door before they go through, and the warrior chops things into quivering bloody sushi as soon as it steps within reach. They've cleared the entire top level of the dungeon and, thanks to an orc stumbling on them, they've discovered the secret door to level 2. They've even managed to kill off half the guards in the first room of level 2, since those were the orcs who came up to investigate. The thief has found an "especially nice" dagger, but has no idea whether it's magical, cursed, or just well-crafted. They're all at full health thanks to their fortuitous find of minor healing potions (see previous article for the recipe!) and they're ready to move on (though the mage could really use some sleep to get his spells back).

Their foray into level 2 begins with the orc guard room. They dispatch the inhabitants, one of whom is already injured since he's the one who ran away from their fight upstairs. At long last, they've found a reasonably safe place where they can sleep. By the time they wake up, they're at full health, the mage is able to re-learn his spells, and the rest of the dungeon beckons. Can they save poor Heather before the dungeon's inhabitants decide to eat her... or worse?

The very next room is a torture chamber, where they release poor Ableforth, a merchant, from his bondage and heal his wounds. He's been delirious with pain for days, but he dimly recalls seeing a human female somewhat recently, a prisoner of the horrible orcs who've been abusing him. The kindly adventurers escort Ableforth safely out of the dungeon complex and send him on his way. He assures them that should they find themselves in the port of Scarsdale, he and his family will treat them very generously at their shop.

Back down to level 2, the party bursts into two different goblin guard quarters. They manage to defeat both groups (separately), however their attack rolls are pitiful. I've rarely seen a 20-sided die produce more single-digit numbers than I did during that session. They managed to roll 1s several times, nearly maiming each other worse than their enemies. Of course the mage did manage to roll a natural 20 - when he was making a wisdom check to heal the warrior. That's at least the second time he's blown his wisdom check with a natural 20, which I've ruled results in 0-3 points of additional damage done. They ended up blowing the rest of their healing potions, PLUS I put a full healing potion on the orc sub-leader in the second room since the warrior was hovering at 1 health and was nearly knocked unconscious by the mage's inexpert medical care.

Despite their bad rolls, they fought fairly well. I'm especially impressed with my youngest - he has a natural affinity for numbers and a logical mind, and he's the only one of the three who consistently remembers to modify his initiative rolls with his dexterity bonus without having to be told to do it. The mage actually managed to bring down the sub-leader nearly by himself, starting with a magic missile in the eye and following up with a well-swung quarterstaff.

So they're still in the dungeon, victorious and healthy, but they still have not found the source of their quest - the poor, missing farmgirl. Plus, there's been no sign of the "missing mage" who's named so prominently in the adventure's title. So much still to come!

Meanwhile, I've found two other adventures that are suitable for 1st-level characters, both of which take place in a city and/or its sewer system. I'm starting to get those ready for when this adventure is complete. Luckily, I found a place online where all of the old Dungeon magazines are available in .pdf format. It's probably illegal for the site to have those there, however since I actually OWN copies of all those issues, I'm comfortable that I'm morally in the clear. Having the materials electronically beats the hell out of digging out my old boxes of magazines and thumbing through them, that's for sure!

[D&D] The Mystery of the Missing Mage (part 3)

2011-03-28T06:00:00.006-04:00

You could easily argue that I took it easy on the kids. I prefer to say that I role-played the orcs who were bright enough but not experienced with intruders in their lair, nor terribly efficient. They "deduced" that the door to the room where the players were sleeping had been locked from the outside, and didn't search it carefully. Since the room's occupants' bodies were already out in the hall, they were more concerned with searching the rest of the complex than exploring a seemingly-empty room. They made a cursory search, but the players had hidden themselves inside footlockers and under rubble and were not discovered.

Shortly after, they snuck out into the hall, led by the thief. She made a successful move silently roll, followed by a backstab for double-damage against the orc leader who had dispatched his men to investigate. They had to fight a couple other orcs who were nearby, but then escaped into an unused side-cavern.

Here's where I was especially nice. They were just getting creamed without a cleric to heal them, and I refuse to run an NPC if I can possibly avoid it. It's just too much of a hassle and it slows the game down whenever they get into a dynamic situation. And if I'm not careful, he ends up just becoming a walking magic item who does a little damage and can fire off a few heals every day.

So instead I added a half-dozen "minor healing potions" to the corpse beneath the yellow mold. I'd used these potions in the past (I think I'd developed a recipe that let the party's mage and, again primary healer in one of my major campaigns, create these potions from scratch using his healing and herbalism abilities. What I cannot remember is how much damage they healed - It was something like 1d4+1 or 2d3, I think) and they were just the ticket for low-level characters. They're even kind of nice for high-level characters who want to top-off or just be able to absorb one extra hit before they drop. This fortuitous discovery let them heal up and get ready to continue.

The remaining 3-4 orcs finished exploring their lair's top level and it was pretty clear to them that the enemy must still be inside. The dog whose chain leash controlled the main entry trapdoor was dead and unmoved, yet the trapdoor was securely closed. They returned to find their commander dead and a trio of intruders lined up at the far end of the hallway, bows, daggers, and darts ready to let fly. The party managed to kill two of the orcs in their free round of missile fire before the remaining two closed on them. About the same time, one last orc came up through the secret door to the lower level, placing him directly behind the party. Luckily the mage spotted him and was able to raise a warning. The warrior quickly cut down two of the three orcs and the rogue dispatched the other. A secret door beckoned to the dark depths below - the second level of the humanoids' filthy den!

Addendum: Hey - check it out, I dug around in my old files (from the Candlemir campaign, should any of my old players stumble across this) and I tracked down the Minor Healing Potion recipe. I made a few little modifications and here it is. I plan to add this as a scroll in an upcoming wizard's workshop where the players can find it. Since some were found in the current adventure, it would make sense for them to find it in the wizard's lair, assuming they find it.

Potion of Minor Healing

The following formula will allow you to concoct a simple, herbal healing potion from fairly common herbs:

Begin with 8 drams of distilled water
Add the juice of 14 comfrey berries
Boil - the steam must be collected and condensed, preferably in an alembic
Stir for 10 minutes, adding crushed root of woundwort
Pour in the condensed steam
Add 1/2 dram of mint juice
Stir
Allow to set for 3 days, stirring 4 times per day

The potion will heal 1d3+2 hp or bring a person to 0 hp if unconscious. However, every time (after the first) that a creature is brought conscious with this concoction within one day's time, a system shock roll must be made or they die. If used on a conscious individual, the only side effect is a slight dizziness (-1 to attack rolls) which persists for about 10 minutes (1 turn). It is impossible to consume more than 4 of these potions in a day's time. The body will vomit up any more than that.

Note1: to craft these potions, roll a blind herbalism check at a +2 bonus and consult the chart below:

Roll Result     Effect
Succeeds      2d3+2 vials of the potion are crafted.
Fails             1d3+1 vials of the potion are crafted.
Natural 20    2d3+2 vials of the potion are crafted. They appear to be fine, but are actually spoiled and are
                    poisonous. The drinker will take 1d3+1 damage, save vs. poison for 0 damage. The drinker will
                   cough up a foamy, bloody sputum that’s easily identifiable.

Note2: if a character is poisoned, a healer and herbalist who is familiar with the recipe for this potion, if tending to the victim, will add a +4 bonus to the saving throw. If they are not familiar with the recipe, the roll is at the standard +2.

Note 3: a character with both Herbalism and Alchemy makes their crafting check at +4, always produces the maximum number of units possible (no roll needed), and can make an Alchemy check to detect tainted results. (I'm pretty sure that Alchemy was a non-weapon proficiency I made up for my game. If I find it, I'll post it here sometime.)

Edit: Yep, I did find it and I wrote about it here.

Social Marketing - The Real Thing?

2011-03-23T06:00:00.003-04:00

"Social Marketing" is the relatively young term for driving customers to your business using the "social" tools of the Internet - Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare, and all of the other, similar applications that people use to feel connected to one another electronically. Social media is all about sharing every aspect of your life, and businesses hope that through social marketing you'll opt to share their products and services in such a way that members of your network are inspired to buy them as well.

I wouldn't say that I doubted it was possible for social marketing to work - some products and services would seem like great fits, and any really well-developed marketing campaign can succeed if it's thought through carefully enough. But these days, the "buzz" is that you have to do social marketing, sometimes to the exclusion of virtually every other form of product advertising. I was pretty skeptical.

Martial arts schools are one area where I know this thinking is very prevalent. I attended a couple of webinars hoping to learn a bit more about using Facebook, not realizing that they were really just sales pitches by a firm that sells consulting services and software in the martial arts industry. So I got an earful about how dojos need to jettison door hangers, yellow pages ads, and flyers and get with the social media program. Really? I wondered. Can that really work? I mean, they're talking to a guy who gets very few facebook responses to the stuff I post, and who couldn't even get 25 people to "like" the page I administer for the Syracuse Writer's Roundtable (once you have 25 or 30 likes, you get more info about site traffic and can assign it a unique site name. I haven't been able to do either of those things for the Roundtable - there's just not enough traffic, despite my efforts to make it relevant and interesting to people).

Something happened last week to change my mind. Well, I should say that it opened my mind to the possibility that social marketing could possibly work. I'm not sold yet, but I'm not too far away, either.

You see, the karate school my family goes to, Five Star Martial Arts, has put out some terrific deals through more "traditional' media - print ads and through the TV show "Bridge Street." The Bridge Street deal was actually available through their website, but that still doesn't really count as social media. Anyhow, these two "traditional media" offers were pretty similar, and they didn't sell worth a damn. Practically zero interest.

Then they put out virtually the same offer again, this time through Groupon. Groupon is a service that people sign up for, and they send out a "deal of the day" every... well, every day. It might be a deal on a restaurant, a spa treatment, dog grooming, photography services, movie tickets - anything. And it's always at least 50% off the regular price. You have 48 hours to buy the deal, and it's common for people to share it with each other on Facebook or through email. That's the "social networking" part. In fact, the deal doesn't become "active" until a minimum number of people have bought in, so buyers are encouraged in that way to share the deal - so it will activate.

The deal went live on Thursday morning. At 8:33 AM, they hit the minimum purchase quantity of 10, and the deal went live. The dojo's owners were delighted. Based on their previous offers, getting 10 sales was outstanding. They continued to watch the numbers sold: 20, then 35, then 50... All day long, the counter continued to rise. And rise. By the time the deal was up Friday night, they'd sold 220 of the deals. Go ahead, read that again, because it's an amazing number. 220. The same deal that sold not a single offer on Bridge Street had sold beyond anyone's wildest expectations. The people at Groupon were floored - it was the single biggest fitness-related offer they'd ever sold in Syracuse. Turns out, when they did a little research, it was one of the biggest responses they'd had anywhere. It was on par with the kinds of numbers they'd see in places like Miami, which could hold Syracuse's entire population in a couple of neighborhoods.

And at the same time, all of these new customers were banging on their Facebook page (which, granted, is currently their entire web presence. They're working on that). They were "liking" it. They were asking questions (and getting immediate responses, or nearly so). It was exactly how social media is supposed to work.

I still think social marketing works best when you somehow get your numbers up high enough for the buzz you generate just going about your regular business can be self-sustaining and "viral," but I no longer totally doubt that it can work. I've seen it work. Wow. I'm prepared to be a believer.

[Karate] Iaido at Last!

2011-03-21T06:00:00.002-04:00

This weekend was insane, and this morning totally snuck up on me. Let me tell you a bit about my weekend.

The core of it was my trip to Ottawa on Saturday. I went with Dave Oddy of Syracuse Jundokan, and we drove up to Mike Sywyk's East Wind Budo Life Center. It was a bit of a hike - almost three hours each way - but it was totally worth it. I was going to a martial arts seminar. At long last, I was actually going to learn Iaido.

Granted, I wasn't going to learn MUCH Iaido - it was only a 3-hour seminar, after all. But it was absolutely jam-packed. We did Iaido the entire time, with no breaks. It was glorious!

Regular readers may remember when I wrote about not being able to find an Iaido teacher in or near Syracuse. So when Dave saw that there was a seminar on the style being held at one of his sister dojos (East Wind also connects up to the main Jundokan dojo in Okinawa, home to Goju-Ryu karate), he made sure to give me a shout.

The seminar was taught by Robert Davis of the IaidoEast dojo. His knowledge of Musō Jikiden Eishin-ryū Iaido, and his thirty years of experience practicing and teaching this ancient art, were extremely evident. Granted, I wouldn't know good Iaido from bad (I mean, I would probably intuitively recognize really incompetent Iaido, but any shades of grey would surely be lost on me), but Sensei Davis's quiet competence was really inspiring and just incredible to watch.

For three solid hours, we drew the sword (in my case a wooden bokken practice sword), cut down our imagined enemies, shook our blades clean, and returned them to the sheath. We did it standing. We did it walking. We did it kneeling (in four different directions). Oh, it was glorious!

I paid for it on Sunday. My quadriceps have never been very flexible, which means three hours of kneeling left me in extreme discomfort and nearly unable to walk, but I don't care. It was totally worth it. I'm deeply grateful to Sensei Oddy, Sensei Sywyk, and Sensei Davis for exposing me at long last to this 500+ - year-old martial art. It was every bit as precise, as focused, as meditative, and as graceful as I'd anticipated. Now I just have to find a way to become a regular student of Sensei Davis.

Beannachtaí na Féile Pádraig oraibh!

2011-03-17T06:00:00.000-04:00

That's Gaelic for "The blessings of St. Patrick's Day be upon you!" Or so I'm told. I don't really speak Gaelic, more's the pity. I sure did like the Irish guy in Braveheart, though!

I'm Not Interested in Your Convenience

2011-03-16T06:00:00.002-04:00

This is currently on my nerves because I've run into its mis-use twice in the last day: the term "at my earliest convenience." It doesn't mean what you (well, not YOU necessarily, but some people) think it means.

In polite conversation, the term is used when you are requesting that someone help you who isn't really obligated to do so. You're requesting something from them, and you're being nice about it. They are well within their rights to say no, but you really hope they don't. For instance, "I believe I am qualified for this job and have enclosed my resume' for your review. Please contact me at your earliest convenience so we can further discuss how my skills would be an asset to your business." That is a correct usage of the phrase.

However recently, I have seen it used by people to refer to themselves. As in, "One of our representatives will get back to you at their earliest convenience." This is from a company I'm paying for a service, so let me be perfectly clear: I don't give a crap about their 'convenience.' I want them to call me as soon as they possibly can, whether it's 'convenient' for them or not.

See, what's happening is that the word "convenience" is, for some reason I cannot fathom, being substituted for the word "opportunity." They are not synonymous, however. The phrase "at your earliest convenience" has a wealth of implied meaning, including, "if it's not too much trouble; at such a time that it pleases you; I recognize that I am not the most important person you need to deal with, and that you have other work that takes precedence, but I am humbly requesting that you contact me if you can possibly find the time and the benevolence to do so; etc." The correct phrase, "at your earliest opportunity" infers none of that. It simply means, "As soon as you possibly can." It is admittedly more polite than "IMMEDIATELY," which obviously signifies either that the situation is an emergency, that you're extremely angry with the level of service you're receiving, or that you feel you're entitled to a response right away. That's an order of magnitude higher, though.

The problem really is that it's arrogant and presumptuous and, frankly, rude to use the phrase "at my earliest convenience" to refer to oneself. Because of the connotations, it's reversing the level of politeness that the phrase infers when used to deal with someone else from whom you are asking a boon. Instead, it makes it clear that whomever you're speaking with is unimportant, not worthy of a quick response, and that you'll contact them when and if you feel like it. In both of the situations where I encountered it (a customer service web page and a voicemail), I'm pretty confident that the speaker didn't mean to say, "You're just a customer, so screw you," but maybe they did.

But assuming that's not what YOU mean, dear reader, please cease the use of this phrase to refer to yourself... at your earliest convenience.

[D&D] The Mystery of the Missing Mage (part 2)

2011-03-15T06:00:00.001-04:00

Since I started writing about getting the kids going on their new Dungeons & Dragons adventure (in both senses of the word - their "adventure" of playing a new game and the adventure titled "The Mystery of the Missing Mage"), I figure I may as well continue on and talk a bit about the playing.

The players:

My daughter, the thief, is a coward. She's fairly loathe to put herself in harm's way, and will gleefully let her brothers' characters die if she must. I have to point out to her from time to time that "they're the only thing keeping you alive. One of them is the only healer in your party (a mage with healing proficiency is literally all they have) and the other guy both takes and deals all the damage. If they die, what's going to happen to you?" at which time she usually bucks up and goes on the offensive in the least hazardous way she can manage. It's really very funny to watch her play.

One of my sons, the mage, alternates between reckless abandon and sheer terror. He feels especially vulnerable and worthless once he runs out of spells - just like every other player who's ever run a first-level mage. Sometimes he's ready to charge in with his figurative guns a'blazin, but then yesterday he was feeling so worthless and fearful that he literally had his character run to the far end of a hallway and watch the battle from there. Granted, he couldn't resist throwing some darts and ended up being fully engaged, but his initial reaction was to grab some popcorn and enjoy the fight from a safe distance. When he finally gets to recharge his spells, I fully expect him to be filled with piss and vinegar once more.

My other son, the warrior, is, well, a warrior. He knows no fear unless his siblings instill some in him. He can't wait to wage into battle, his gleaming sword covered in gore. His solution to whatever problem they're having is to attack, smash, or ignore it. It's not too unlike his actual personality, truth be told. Of course, he's utterly malleable to the wishes of his siblings - whatever they suggest, he immediately and enthusiastically parrots.

I began the game with an introduction explaining where they had come from and how they'd gotten where they currently were. Since the mage and the thief are both elves, I made them cousins and explained that they'd been sent from their forest village to live with a mutual uncle. The ex-adventurer runs an academy for fighters, and had taken them in hoping to train them. They were both pretty hopeless, the thief being incompetent with anything other than her shortsword and daggers, and the mage barely managing to swing a large stick (quarterstaff, actually) without clubbing himself of a cohort. Ultimately, the thief was allowed to go learn from the master thieves in another town, and the mage was sent to train under an arch-wizard friend of the uncle. The final player, the human warrior, was a natural fighter. He was sent to serve as a cadet in the guard of a nearby lord to complete his warrior training.

The three friends met at a tavern in a town near to their uncle's home. They had planned to catch up on their adventures, spend the night at the inn, then travel back home the following morning. Instead, they were deluged with the hand-wringing fears and concerns of the locals. Livestock had disappeared, things were heard moving in the forest at night, and finally a young girl had disappeared from her father's farm only the night before. Something had to be done!

So off they went. They hadn't asked any directions, hadn't really inquired where they needed to go, they'd simply bargained for their reward and then charged off... where are we going?? Okay, back to the inn to ask directions.

Somehow they managed to find the cave where the adventure was to take place. The thief scouted inside, creeping up the dark hallway with only her infravision to light the way. She heard movement up ahead, followed by a rumbling from behind, so she hid in the shadows.

The rumbling, it turns out, was a heavy wall of solid rock that was closing down across the entrance to the cave, sealing it completely. The warrior and the mage quickly ran inside before it closed, then made their way in the dark, hand in hand (since the warrior could see nothing in the utter blackness). They walked right past the thief, who had forgotten she was hiding in the shadows and scared the pants off her own party. But there was still the sound from up ahead in the darkness.

It turned out to be a giant, two-headed dog-bear (or bear-dog. I dunno - the module just called it a "guard beast". You figure it out. Regardless, at 1 HD, it wasn't worth the massive XP specified in the adventure). It advanced menacingly on the party, clearly preparing to attack. True to his nature, the warrior charged ahead, rolling a natural 20 (a guaranteed hit, plus double-damage!) followed by maximum damage! He clove the creature into puppy chow, and the party continued merrily on their way.

Up ahead, the atypically-brave thief for whatever reason decides to lead the charge, kicking in a door. Which leaves her at the mercy of the orc guard who was coming to check on the noise from the next room. She's quickly reduced to 2 HP and beats a hasty retreat, hiding behind the big warrior (played by her little brother) who handily destroys the guard.

The next two rooms are both filled with orc families - adults, women, and children - which the party engage one room at a time and cheerfully slaughter. In the process, the mage uses the last of his spells, the warrior loses a third of his health, and the poor thief is still at 2 HP (the mage blew his healing rolls on both the fighter and the thief). They're determined to catch some sleep, however none of the rooms they've found have doors on them, and they're rightfully concerned (because I suggested it) that they might be attacked by the friends of the orcs they just slew if they decide to spend the night in their home. Besides, they can see another door just a few feet up the hall, and this one has an actual door with a lock and everything.

So once more into the fray they charge. I make some strategic suggestions which they eagerly adopt. This time, they open the door and let whomever's inside come charging out to them. It sort of works, and allows the thief to execute her first backstab, perched above the door jamb. There are four orc guards in this room, and they handily slay three of them. The fourth runs away, however, and they make no move to chase him or even determine where he went. In fact, the thief is so desperate to get her health back - and the mage is so intensely focused on getting his spells back - that they barely remember to lock the door before flinging themselves onto the beds inside the room and going to sleep.

So, naturally, they're awakened a short time later by the friends of the one who got away...

To be continued.

First Adventure - The Mystery of the Missing Mage

2011-03-14T06:00:00.001-04:00

Over the last few days, I really cranked up the Dungeons & Dragons amplitude at my house. About a week ago I started pulling out my old rulebooks and reading through my materials. Over the course of the last week, I installed antique software (the AD&D Core Rules 2.0 with Expansion, the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas, and the Dragon Magazine Archive of the first 250 issues (nearly all of which issues I own in hardcopy, too.)), I downloaded outdated and archived updates for them, and I hunted down whatever materials I could find online.

None of it was easy, either. In terms of both my own materials and the stuff I could find online, I'm overwhelmed by the volume of stuff, and the need to comb through it and decide what's usable and what isn't. At the same time, there's likely some specific stuff that, if I knew it existed, how to search for it and/or where to find it, it would make my life much easier, but I don't. The version of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons that I've decided to play is the old 2nd Edition rules, which came out around 1989, and were replaced with the 3.0 ruleset in the late 1990s. So most of the people who were "into" D&D enough to want to put stuff on the Internet had mostly moved on to the 3.x rules by the time the Internet became truly ubiquitous and commonplace. If there's a treasure-trove of 2nd Ed. material on the intertubes, I'm not finding it.

Luckily, I did find "The Mystery of the Missing Mage," by Bruce Silverstein. He apparently wrote it back in 1987, and then updated it with 2nd Edition rules. And it's still kicking around in various places online. We've just gotten into it, and I have to say that he really did a terrific job with it. The adventure is a bit stingy in some places with treasure and then piles it on in others, and it looks to me as if the experience numbers he's using with some of the monsters are awfully high, but I can fix that stuff easily enough. Mostly, it's a logical, well-thought-out, well-written adventure designed explicitly for first-level characters (in fact, it seems to be tailored for as few as three first level characters, which fits my group perfectly!). So thanks, Bruce! You made our weekend!

I kind of knew I was making a mistake Saturday when I invited the kids to roll up some characters. My intention was several-fold. I wanted to see if they had any aptitude for the concepts behind the game. I wanted to gauge their interest level. I wanted to know what sorts of characters interested them, so that I could tailor the adventures I'd be writing accordingly. I also needed to test the AD&D Core Rules software to see if I wanted to use it, because as far as I could recall I never really had used it full-bore as a DM before. By the time it came out, I wasn't really a very active DM.

Well, I got to do all of that, but at a price. The kids LOVED creating characters, and while none of them were actually willing to sit down and read the boring old Player's Handbook (those are their words, not mine - I used to love reading through the hardcover manuals, modules, magazines, accessories, and any other rulebooks or materials I could find), they desperately wanted to start playing the game. So I had no choice - if I wanted to strike while the iron was hot, while their interest level was still high, I had to come up with an adventure in less than a day and be ready to run it on Sunday afternoon. And, like I said above, It was Bruce Silverstein to the rescue.

So thanks, Bruce. I'm assuming your old "geocities" email address is defunct, but if you should stumble across this, know that your 24-year-old adventure is still getting the job done. Great work!

Now if I could just wrangle all of the "Ruins of Undermountain" stuff under control and pull some adventures out of my old Dungeon magazines. Mercifully, I've found a place where I can get my old Dungeons (which I still have in a box - hundreds of them) in .pdf format, which saves me having to scan them in myself. Doesn't make it any faster to figure out which modules go together easily to make a worthwhile campaign. Plus there's all the Forgotten realms books, accessories, modules, and downloads I have. Ugh. Sometimes it almost seems like it would be faster to just create my own world. But I've done that before, too. It's not.

Griping aside, though, I'm really, sincerely enjoying watching my kids discover the game that's given me so much entertainment over the years. My youngest decided to play a Fighter, and managed to roll an 18/51 strength, so he's no slouch. With longsword specialization and a shield, he's blissfully cleaving his way through anything that stands before him. My middle kid was a shoe-in for the Mage from the get-go, and he's struggling with the age-old issue of, "Hey, I cast all my spells, and I can't hit the broad side of a barn with these weapons, what am I supposed to do??" My answer, as I'm sure many DMs before me have offered, is simple: "Do your best. When you get a few more levels under your beard, it's all worthwhile." Surprisingly, my daughter - who I'd had pegged for a druid, a priest, or possibly a warrior - opted for a thief. She's in there flinging daggers around and trying to set herself up for the backstab (I need to help her with that) like a pro.

I honestly can't say if I'll wrestle everything that I've got at my disposal into some kind of order. There's just so much of it, and I have so little time these days. But I'm confident that I can keep my kids entertained with the game for quite some time, and maybe when they're a bit older one of them will say, "Hey Dad, I'd like to DM. Got any materials I can use." I'll let them dig out from under that mountain - maybe they'll find some treasure in there.

[D&D] The AD&D Treasure Trove

2011-03-10T06:00:00.002-05:00

No, the Treasure Trove isn't a booklet of wealth and magical items. Well, it might be, but that's not what I'm talking about. No, I actually own a treasure trove of Advanced Dungeons & Dragons materials. So many, in fact, that I'm a bit baffled about where to start with them. I don't even really know what all I have. It's somewhat daunting.

I've begun to dig into it, however. For years, I've been wanting to introduce my kids to Fantasy Role-Playing Games, but I've been putting it off until the youngest could read more-or less unassisted. Well, he finally can, so I suppose it's time to buckle down and whip up a game. It's going to be tough, though. When I was a teenager, I literally could (and often did) spend 10-20 hours in a given week working on that week's adventure. I'd create non-player characters. I'd create detailed maps, room descriptions, and locations. I'd describe in detail what the characters saw, what they experienced, what the other characters in the game did and what they had to say. I wrote new spells, new abilities, and wove everything together into a story replete with unexpected twists and turns, logical behaviour that the players could actually predict if they worked it out, and often complex puzzles, quests, histories, songs, poems, and prophecies. If the players found a book, I told them what it looked like, what it was made of, how heavy it was, the color of the ink, and anything else they might possibly want to know. That was important to the game, not only because it gave tremendous depth and flavor to the experience of playing, but it also challenged the players in a unique way - they couldn't know what was important or what wasn't simply based on how much detail I used to describe it. EVERYTHING was incredibly detailed, so they had to think like their characters, analyze all the information they had, and then role-play their chosen solution.

Now, bear in mind that in addition to all of that work, the game sessions themselves lasted anywhere from eight to fourteen hours. We'd start playing around six in the evening, and it wasn't unheard-of for us to finally stagger out into the morning sun at eight the next day. Monsters were slain, puzzles were solved, dice were rolled, and a great deal of food was eaten in those sessions. And then I had to calculate experience, figure out treasure, provide details on magical items acquired, and then write the adventure for the next week.

Plus, my campaign was always very open-ended. I tried to accommodate whatever the players would reasonably ask for their characters to do. If they wanted to skip the main quest I'd anticipated and hop on a boat to faraway lands instead, I didn't stop them. As such, I couldn't get all that far ahead in designing my campaign, even assuming I had the time to get far ahead, which I really didn't.

It got so crazy trying to keep up with everything that it actually caused me to create the most detailed magic item ever made. The Warband was actually a huge amount of work, but it was a reaction to my desire to avoid having to make up the knowledge of "sentient" magical items on the spot - which was really hard, and often resulted in my players writing out page after page after page of "questions I ask my magic item when we're sitting around the campfire at night." Just once, I wanted to hand somebody an item and say "here's everything it could possibly know. Don't ask me any more questions." It sorta worked. But I digress.

Anyway, I'm poring through my old AD&D materials, with the goal of creating an intro campaign for my kids, and then moving on to more intermediate stuff once they get the hang of it. All in the least work-intensive way possible, since I just don't have the time.

One of my ideas is to use technology. Luckily, I have some - I own the AD&D Core Rules 2.0 software, which has a whole bunch of features including RTF versions of most of the manuals, some map-making software (two of them - one of which is overly basic and the other of which is overly complex, but I have yet to find anything better), and some tools for typing up character sheets for players and NPCs alike. I also own the first 250 issues of Dragon Magazine as PDF files, which should yield some adventures, magic items, and other useful stuff in an easily-accessible format. Plus, I have the Forgotten Realms Interactive Atlas, which should make it easy to produce maps I can use as I need them.

But what I mostly need are pre-written adventures, preferably set in the Forgotten Realms, for low-level characters, using the 2nd Edition AD&D ruleset. Turns out, that's not so easy to find online, and I don't have Dungeon Magazine as PDFs. I really wish I did.

At some point, I may post an inventory of all the AD&D stuff I have - or perhaps just the Forgotten Realms stuff, as I'm pretty sure I've paid for at least one of Ed Greenwood's cars. Right now, though, I'm struggling with the joys of installing software intended for Windows 98 on a Windows 7 computer. Ugh. I think I failed my save vs. old software.

Dropbox! (yeah, again)

2011-03-09T06:00:00.001-05:00

Monday night, I was extolling the virtues of the Dropbox tool to my Writer's Roundtable. They asked me to share the details with them, so last night I sent out an email to the group, and got a great question in return. I thought it would make a fine article to share them both.

Hello Writers,

Per requests from last evening’s meeting, I’m posting this info regarding the Dropbox software that I use and absolutely love. Dropbox is a FREE utility that installs on any computer (well, maybe not Jeff’s), as well as on most mobile devices like Smartphones and (I believe) iPads. It leverages “Cloud” technology, which is a fancy way of saying that it stores data on servers that are off in a datacenter somewhere and you never physically see them, but they’re accessible from anywhere through the Internet. Dropbox has two key features that make it super-useful to me and many other writers, and I suspect it might be great for some of you as well. They are:

1.    Accessibility – by storing your key files in your computer’s Dropbox folder and connecting to the Internet, those files become accessible from anywhere. Access them from a Library or a friend’s computer via any web browser. Access them from a smartphone or other mobile device. Access them from any other computer you own, and always be sure that you’re getting the current version.
a.    As a sub-feature of item 1, the files are always synchronized as long as you’re connected to the internet, so you never have to worry that you have different versions of your files on different computers. Your Dropbox folders are always up to date!
2.    Remote, secure storage – by putting your files up “in the cloud,” you ensure that they’re safe, even if something awful happens to your computer (right Eric?!). And the files are transmitted and stored using military-grade encryption, so you don’t have to worry about security (assuming you use a good password and keep it secret, keep it safe).
a.    Again, as a sub-feature of item 2, Dropbox maintains a log of all the files you’ve added, changed, or deleted, and using that log you can undelete files, even if they’re completely erased from your Dropbox folder and all the computers it’s installed on. I’ve never needed to use this feature, but it’s awesome to know that it’s there if I ever mistakenly delete or overwrite an irreplaceable document.

There are also a handful of other features – including the ability to “share” a particular folder with specific individuals so they can access it from anywhere, but the ones above are the biggies.

Personally, I have ALL of my novel, short story, research, and notes files stored on my Dropbox, ensuring that I can access them from any of my computers and making certain that they’re safely backed up in the event of a disaster of less than biblical proportions. I keep lots of other documents there, too. It’s become my one-stop repository for anything I consider important.

So why am I sharing this info with all of you? Well, certainly because I was asked to after I raved about it at the meeting last night. Also because I think it’s a terrific tool and I’d feel better knowing that the files you all work so hard to create are safely stored away where you can get to them, but where harm cannot. And, in the interests of full disclosure, I get a bonus amount of free space in my Dropbox every time somebody I refer to the service downloads and installs Dropbox using my link. But fear not – it’s totally fair, because each of those people ALSO get free space by using my link. So it’s win-win!

Anyway, here’s the link: http://db.tt/7tZpEx2

You don’t have to use my link, but you’ll get 256 MB of free space if you do, so you probably should. Once you’ve downloaded and installed the software, note that you can also get bonus free space by completing the “tour” on the website and various other simple tasks. Be sure to check it out at www.dropbox.com after you’ve created your account and installed the software.

Any questions about Dropbox, don’t hesitate to ask. I wouldn’t recommend it so highly if I didn’t believe it was an absolutely outstanding tool that I think you’ll all love as much as I do.

Regards,

Mike

One of my group's member responded with this question:

Hi Mike,

I appreciate the information you have passed on and I am very interested in some type of 'cloud' filing/saving. I do have a concern though - I listened to a fairly lengthy discussion on this type of data saving on NPR last week and they basically said that when you save all of your stuff on a free database there are risks involved. When downloading free software, the company providing that service usually has no contract or liability when it comes to protecting your stuff. Whereas, if you pay for a service - there is a contractual relationship established, therefore more of an incentive to protect.

I really know very little about this except what I heard on that program and some subsequent Google searches after, but is the military-grade encrypted safety the same as brought to us by WikiLeaks? (Okay, too dramatic, but you get my drift.) I'm just wondering how you are convinced of the safety of anything that is a free service?

Further thoughts and knowledge on this subject welcome....

Here's my reply:

“Military grade” encryption refers to how data is deliberately scrambled in such a way that somebody trying to catch it as it flits around the internet or somebody trying to hack it from the computer where it’s stored cannot unscramble it. Well, technically they could, but they’d need the world’s most powerful computer running for about a hundred years to do it, so it’s considered unbreakable. The standard is 128-bit, and it’s the same stuff banks use for online banking. It’s generally considered completely secure.

Nothing was “decrypted” as far as Wikileaks is concerned. Wikileaks is just a storehouse – think of it as a public repository where anybody who wants to can take information that’s supposed to be private and toss it out for the world to see. They don’t hack into private data – it’s provided by people who legitimately have access to it. In the most infamous Wikileaks case, a soldier with top-secret-level clearance simply used his access to Defense Department computer systems to copy the files he wanted onto a CD that was labeled “Lady Gaga” and then walk out of the building with it.

None of which has anything at all to do with Dropbox. They could as easily have said “Banking-grade encryption” because it’s the same thing.

As to the point made on NPR – in a properly-developed “Cloud-based” system, even the people running the “cloud” shouldn’t be able to access your data. Dropbox has a pretty good reputation on the web, so I’m comfortable that nobody there is sifting through my files (or is even able to if they wanted to). Now, the other question might be, “What if Dropbox suddenly goes out of business tomorrow. Do I lose all of my files?” Luckily, the answer is “no,” because in addition to being stored on Dropbox’s servers, all of your files are also stored locally on your computer.

In my opinion, the risk that my files would get lost because my computer suffers catastrophic hardware failure is MUCH higher than the risk that Dropbox is going to lose my data. And the value of having my data not only protected off-site, but also available and synchronized no matter which of my computing devices I’m using, more than outweighs any theoretical (and at this point entirely unsubstantiated) risks.

And bear in mind, Dropbox is only Free at its most basic level. They offer a relatively modest amount of space for nothing. But if you want to back up your entire iTunes or MP3 collection, it probably won’t fit within the free service. If you want to back up large photography files or videos, that probably won’t fit. If you need off-site synchronization and storage to run a business that uses large files or a lot of data, it’s not going to fit in the amount of space you get for free. Dropbox’s bread and butter is in their PAID services, and they’re not going to risk putting themselves out of business by screwing their free users. Their free service is the loss-leader designed to generate positive buzz, interest, and word-of-mouth so they can sell their premium service to the people who need it. So yes, I trust them as much as I would if I were one of their paying customers, because it’s still in their interest to treat me well, and counter to their interests to treat me poorly.

Great question!

So there you have it - Dropbox is awesome. And if you're going to get it anyway (and I can't think of really anyone who wouldn't get some value out of it), be sure to use my link and enjoy the extra space you'll get.

America: The Slovening

2011-03-08T06:00:00.002-05:00

There was a time when personal grooming and fashion were considered absolutely vital in America. Formality was the norm. If you were going to church on Sunday, men wore a suit and a hat, women a dress and bonnet (or hat). The same for everyday tasks, like going to work or the grocery store. Nearly everything was more formal, from face-to-face greetings and salutations to written correspondence. In fact, someone could expect to spend a significant amount of time grooming and dressing, writing a letter, or doing most other things. What's fascinating to me is that as chores like cooking, cleaning, and traveling have been made faster and easier by modern conveniences, we've at the same time simply abandoned formalities that, in theory, we now could spend more time on.

Scott Adams pokes fun at this a bit on the cover of his book "Casual Day has Gone Too Far." In it, we see Dilbert and his co-workers in various attire, from a tutu to completely nude. It's funny, but it's actually not all that far off. Have you looked into a classroom lately? Dilbert in his bathrobe is humorous, but students in their pajamas are just slovenly. What started to become commonplace in colleges a decade ago has now, as often happens, filtered down into the primary schools. It wouldn't surprise me to see it make its way into the workplace shortly thereafter. Certainly the suit and tie has gone out of fashion at most businesses.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to lament the passing of the necktie per se. But I wonder how much more casual our society can really get. Long, carefully-handwritten letters have given way to emails (which, incredibly, are also falling out of fashion already), twitter posts, and text messages. Business attire has given way to business casual, to casual, and (at least in schools) ultimately to scruffy, unkempt sleepware.

I suspect that this is the natural progression of modern society - as we're challenged less, we challenge ourselves less. As things get easier to do, we expect less of ourselves. Food and nutrition are, I think, another fine example of this behaviour. Since the 1980s, or even as far back as the invention of the TV Dinner in the 1950s, meals have been changing from formal affairs of carefully-selected foods and family togetherness to a continuous daily grazing interspersed by periods of greater caloric intake, but with very little non-processed food involved. The meal is no longer, replaced by the "eating occasions" that pop up all through the day. And formal food - found on the outside walls of the supermarket, for the most part - has been replaced with the quicker, more casual "food product" which is barely recognizable as food at all, either in appearance or based in its list of ingredients. I mean, really, who'd chose "high fructose corn syrup" as an ingredient if they were going to sit down and decide what to feed their family? And if you did decide you needed it as an ingredient, where would you use it - in the dessert? Or in every single item you prepared?

I don't miss formality for formality's sake. Suits and ties, let alone the powdered wigs of our founding fathers, were uncomfortable to wear, expensive to maintain, and added a lot of extra time to the simple process of getting dressed. I'm happy with a T-shirt and jeans for the most part. But I do lament the loss of some of the attitudes that went along with the formality. The idea of taking personal pride on one's appearance was part of an overall code of behavior that I think made society more genteel. The quest for "faster and easier" threatens to make us a weak, fat, slovenly people. I've certainly seen it in myself. It's something I'd like to change. It's something I'd like very much to help my children avoid completely. But that won't make much of a dent in our overall culture, and I'm profoundly troubled that it's going to get worse for us before it gets better - that our casual attitude toward personal grooming, toward health and nutrition, toward our studies (I mean, don't even get me started on kids attitudes toward doing their homework today, or the lax expectations of college professors toward their students' quality of work), toward work, and toward social interactions will leave us poorly prepared to deal with the challenges of the next fifty years.

If, as I suspect, our formality gave us a buffer - if slowing things down and being deliberate about our choices, our interactions, our communications, made us more thoughtful and considerate - then abandoning that formality may not just leave us as casual, but as casualties.

The Quest for Iaido

2011-03-07T06:00:00.004-05:00

It shouldn't be this hard. I live in a pretty good-sized city. It's not huge, but neither is it small. That's one of the things I've always liked about Syracuse - it's small enough that it doesn't have issues like traffic jams and the like, but it's big enough to (usually) have most of the services, entertainment, and businesses I want. Certain martial arts are a notable exception, however.

In Syracuse, you can train in a few different flavors of Goju-Ryu karate, from the traditional flavor of Syracuse Jundokan to the more Americanized version you'd find at Greg Tearney's. You can train in Kenpo at FiveStar Martial Arts, but it's pretty different from what you'd find at an Ed Parker-logo'd school. There's also Duncan's Chinese Kenpo, which is also its own animal (no pun intended). Sun Chong teaches Tae Kwon Do. There are at least two kung-fu schools - Syracuse Kung Fu and White Crane - both on the East side of town. Likewise, Aikido of CNY is over in that area, too. There's Tai Kai if you want Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu. And there's more MMA than you can shake a stick at, from LaVallee's to Carlos Tearney's Champions MMA to Curtis Tillman's and many, many others.

But that's pretty much it. If you're interested in other styles of martial arts, you're out of luck. There's no Shotokan Karate here. No Israeli Krav Maga. No Russian Systema. No Filipino Arnis or Escrima. And no Kendo or Iaido (much less the rarer Kenjutsu or Iaijutsu). In fact, the closest that you can find any of these is Rochester or Utica, and the latter city is a fraction the size of Syracuse.

I'm not going to try to guess why the Syracuse martial arts community isn't more diverse. It seems that a few schools in particular have been extraordinarily successful here - Tearney's and LaVallee's in particular - and it may be that that has something to do with it. I don't really know. I do know that I want to learn Iaido, and I'm having a hell of a time finding a local teacher. I followed a couple of local leads, but they dead-ended. That leaves me with a really solid teacher in Utica who isn't accepting new students at the moment, and another in Rochester about whom I don't really know much.

That's a shame, because I think Iaido is an absolutely beautiful, elegant art. It's the closest martial art to the practices of the Japanese Samurai, who were a unique and fascinating warrior class noted for the graceful strength of their swords.Iaido has no person-to-person combat, no sparring. From what I've seen, it's not much of a workout. Instead, it focuses intensely on the precise control and movements of the katana sword - drawing, striking, and resheathing the blade according to prescribed sets of movements. It takes the weapons of war and makes them beautiful. It takes the legacy of the Samurai, which was at times brutal, even monstrous (just as European knights weren't all chivalric protectors of the downtrodden) and makes it pure and clean. If I ever have the money, I'd love to own a high-quality katana someday, but if I were to do so, I'd also want to know how to hold it and use it properly (just as I wouldn't want to own a Ferrari if I didn't know how to drive). I want to embrace this ancient weapon of war and the movements that go with it. I want to feel the power of battle transformed into a quiet, meditative, even artistic act. I want to, and perhaps I will. But I probably won't be learning it in Syracuse.

[Karate] Halfway to the Beginning

2011-03-04T06:00:00.003-05:00

Last night, my family and I earned our blue belts at karate. As Sensei Oddy says, we all look like "karate smurfs" now with our blue gis and blue belts.

So that means we're halfway to earning our black belts - at least in terms of the number of belts between white and black. Chronologically, we're probably more like a third of the way there at best. "There" being the storied "black belt" that so many people, in the U.S. anyway, associate with mastery of a martial art. It's really a beginning, though. Just as you have to "master" the elementary concepts of gradeschool before going on to high school and college to really learn useful skills like critical thinking, you have to know your basics in karate before you can fully understand the underlying concepts.

Which doesn't make us any less thrilled to have earned our blue belts. As awkward as I often still feel, I've definitely improved in balance, strength, power, and endurance in the last year. My stances are still sloppy, but less sloppy than they used to be. I'm working hard to be sure I generate power from my hips, not just my shoulders, and I think I've made progress there as well.

Better still, I get to watch my kids in action, which is awesome. My boys tend to be kind of half-assed unless they're really motivated, but even with them I've seen progress. My daughter, though, has grown tremendously in coordination and self-confidence, and it's great to share her enthusiasm and excitement.

There's an awful lot left to learn, and a lot of work remaining to forge our bodies into the kind of tools we want them to be. But forging takes heat and hammering, and there's a lot of that left to do. Progress is good though, and it feels great to have met another milestone in our lifelong journey.

Next stop - green belt! The expectations get higher, the techniques and kata get tougher, and hopefully the kicks get higher and stronger. Woo hoo!

[Game Review] Metroplexity

2011-03-02T06:00:00.001-05:00

If you go to Metroplexity's website, you'll find a game that's in early beta, but is still very playable. It's a neat idea - an entirely web-based game that's a mix of text, simplistic artwork, and a combat system that's simple and yet extensive. It's incomplete - there's a point at which you can finish most or all of the game's content and there's nothing more to do even though the story remains incomplete. Still, you can easily play for several weeks before you reach that point.

The game doesn't put a lot of effort into helping players along. This is good because it challenges you to figure out what's going on, but it's also annoying if you don't really understand what the heck you're supposed to be doing. Still, it reminded me of the old 80s text-based adventures, where you were told almost nothing about how to play the game, and had to stumble along trying to figure out what to do. Those games really put hair on your chest, so to speak, and today's gamers are spoiled by comparison.

One thing that took me quite a while to figure out was the combat system. It's evidently based on card games like Magic: The Gathering or somesuch, where you build "decks" of combat techniques and then have to play them in sequence to build combinations. Moreover, certain techniques or combinations will work better in some situations or others, so you need to account for that. Finally, there are three types of attacks - melee, ranged and the sort-of magical "etheric," and you really ought to choose your attacks based on the sort of weapon you're using. I eventually figured out that I could build separate decks, and I split my cards into "melee" and "ranged" decks so that I could match them up to my chosen weapons.

The ability to move your character around in the game and take action is based on energy points. You get a certain number of points each day, and you can recover some of them by using food or drugs. Once you've exhausted all of your energy, your hunger and your "body" (which is consumed by using the special drugs and drug-like substances, like coffee), you're done for the day. This definitely limits how much time you can put into the game. Again, this is good if you're inclined to get sucked in and spend too much time playing the game, but managing your energy can be a bit of a nuisance and sometimes seemed like it got in the way of playing the game.

But gameplay aside, the game is fun to play, presents an interesting storyline, and challenges the player to figure out what's going on and then solve it. That's what's really important after all. Granted, Metroplexity is still in "early beta," so it's not perfect and it's not done. But it's also completely free - which it might or might not be when it's finished (I haven't seen anything one way or the other). As free games go, its unique and entertaining enough to be a great way to spend some time. I liked it enough to give it a B, and when it's finished it could easily rise higher than that.

[Game Review] Assassin's Creed 2

2011-03-01T06:00:00.004-05:00

I played the first Assassin's Creed a year ago, and I enjoyed it very much. (Click the link to read my review of the first game). It had some flaws, but overall it was a solid game, especially since I paid almost nothing for it. In many things - games, books, and movies especially - we hope that sequels will manage to capture what we liked about the original and then improve upon it. All too often, they fail to achieve either or both of those goals. Assassin's Creed 2 is the happy exception.

Assassin's Creed 2 managed to maintain much of the feel of the original game, from the historic settings to the combat moves and the relatively open nature of the gameplay. It downplayed the need to perform a wide variety of side missions in each city, concentrating instead on the main storyline. But it made up for that by making the main storyline extremely compelling.

Sadly, some of the original's flaws carried over as well. For instance, it's often incredibly frustrating to get your character to move precisely where and how you want, even when you use the controls precisely as designed. The ONLY time I found myself cursing this game was when I would follow a pickpocket all over town, finally catch up to him, and then somehow swing my fist at empty air instead of clouting him soundly like I should have. Or when the game would cause my character to jump off in some random direction that had nothing to do with the keystrokes I entered, for no apparent reason, and usually get me killed. Man I hated that. It was especially frustrating because, much of the time, the game is really, really smooth about figuring out where you wanted your guy to go, so he could effortlessly swing and jump from one precarious perch to the next. So when that capability failed - when the game not only didn't figure out what you were trying to do, but actually did something fatally contrary to what you were explicitly telling it to do - it was doubly frustrating.

This game actually involves the same "character," in the sense that you're playing a modern-era man who is descended from the "assassins" in the game. He is able to use these high-tech machines to enter a virtual world with his mind, where adventures from his ancestors are recreated. This allows him to explore where they lived, learn what they knew, and investigate people, places, and hidden clues that offer up information he and his cohorts can use in present day. The first time, he lived life in the body of an assassin in the Middle East during the time of the crusades. In the sequel, he takes on the identity of a Florentine nobleman who must avenge his family and continue to fight against the evil Templars, who continue to plot world domination right up through the present day.

Other changes include a wide array of different weapons, a home base that you can enter pretty much whenever you like, and money that's used to procure your new weapons and armor, as well as to make improvements to your home town. The weapons give you steadily increasing combat effectiveness throughout the game. The introduction of money, however, was somewhat clumsy. By midway through the game, I had such a ridiculous amount of money that it ceased to have any meaning for me. Only in the very earliest stages of the game did I ever make any real decisions based on what I could afford.

Lastly, the sequel introduced a series of puzzle-style mini-games, where you had to unravel the pieces of a mystery by finding and then decoding them one at a time. I found these mini-games extremely tedious, and most of them I only managed to solve by randomly clicking stuff until something positive happened.

Overall, though, Assassin's Creed 2 was a worthy successor to the original, and just as much fun to play. Better still, it didn't shoehorn you into a single fighting style at the very end, which really affected my ability to fully enjoy the first game. The game didn't feel quite as open as the first one - I was encouraged more to follow a prescribed series of quests in order - and I'm not sure there was quite as much strategy involved as in the first game. Still, it kept me cheerfully occupied for a couple of weeks, and that's really what I ask my games to do for me. I look forward to the forthcoming Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood to be released for the PC, and then a year later I can buy it when it's suitably discounted.

I rate Assassin's Creed 2 an A- and recommend it highly!

Cars

2011-02-28T06:00:00.003-05:00

I'm not a car guy. I never was. I mean, yes, there are some cars that I'll drool over - Ferrari's and Lambourghanis, in particular, are just gorgeous. DeLoreans are pretty spiffy-looking, too, for that matter. Corvettes and Vipers are nice. But that's not the same as being a real car enthusiast, or even a knowledgeable owner.

I had a Camaro once - a gold, 1980 Chevy 350 Camaro with the rear spoiler (because they looked terrible without it). I made a few minor improvements to it - nice tires, racing plugs, I might have changed out the carb - I forget. It was an awesome car that I really did love and I enjoyed driving. But I was incapable of doing any significant work on it myself. I just don't have the aptitude.

So unlike computers - which I can usually make dance to my tune for the most part - cars run roughshod over me. I'm at their mercy. I have a peripheral understanding of how they work that's less and less relevant with each passing year farther away from carburetors and other pre-computerized technology.

I suppose I've been fortunate these last ten years or so. My wife and I bought two new vehicles back when we were just starting our family. We needed to replace a Chevy Cavalier and a Chevy S-10 Pickup with more kid-friendly vehicles. Neither was really suited to carseats. Within a couple of years, we had migrated to a Pontiac Grand-Am as our car (which was slightly bigger than the Cavalier or the S-10) and an almost fully-loaded Chevy Venture Minivan as our primary workhorse vehicle. We bought them both new, benefiting from my uncle's GM employee discount and saving a nice hunk of change as a result. Back in the 90s, I also had a GM Mastercard as my primary credit card, and it had a very generous 5% rewards program where that money could only be applied to a new General Motors vehicle. Holy cow did that add up across the four GM vehicles I bought between 1992 and 2001.

Those cars - the Venture and the Grand Am - were the last vehicles I'd bought. We've put around 90,000 miles on the minivan and about 115,000 on the car. The van took us to Rochester, Howe's Caverns, and Toronto. The car took me back and forth to my old company's Connecticut headquarters a couple dozen times. Roughly ten years and around a hundred thousand miles each isn't exactly a bad run.

But I was hoping for more, dammit! The Venture's starting to show some significant body rust in a couple spots, and it's been in and out of the repair shop almost a dozen times in the last couple of years. It's teetering on the razor edge of being no longer worth fixing. It needed a new head gasket recently that almost but didn't quite push it over the edge. The Grand Am, meanwhile, is absolutely spotless. Its body is in gorgeous shape, the interior is spotless, and the engine has been relatively problem-free.

So imagine my surprise last Wednesday when, after our stint on Bridge Street, my wife went to pull out of her parking space at the TV studio and discovered that the steering wheel would absolutely not turn to the left. It simply wouldn't. We had to have AAA tow it and the next day we got the news: this car, which has a blue-book value of around $3,500, needed $2,500 in repairs, because the cradle and other suspension parts have pretty well rotted away. Dammit!! That wasn't supposed to happen. That car looked to be in great shape - it was supposed to last another couple of years at least. I was hoping to get between 125,000 and 150,000 miles out of the darn thing. And now, all of a sudden, it's undriveable and practically worthless.

So on Saturday, we got to head on over to Burdick's Driver's Village to buy ourselves the first used vehicle since my Camaro. I like buying new. I like that new car smell (though I've read it's rife with chemicals that probably give you cancer or something. I don't care - I like the smell anyway). I like how tight and clean and new everything is. I like being the original owner - the first one to drive it since it left the factory. I like that it's only ever been mine and mine alone. But, my wife made it clear that our finances didn't support the $8,000-10,000+ premium to enjoy those particular benefits. With both of our cars on or over the edge of utter ruin, we had to be frugal. We had to buy used.

And do you know that General Motors currently doesn't manufacture any minivans at all? What the hell? So after poking around on sites like edmunds.com and cars.com, I came away pretty impressed with the Kia Sedona of all things. Prior to that I'd been leaning heavily toward the Chyrsler Town and Country, but the reviews of both vehicles really made the Sedona sound like the better buy. So that's what we ended up with - a 2010 Sedona that had previously been a Hertz rental vehicle in New Hampshire or someplace. It's a bare-bones minivan - it doesn't even have power sliding doors and I'm beginning to doubt that the cruise control buttons on the steering wheel actually do anything. But it was cheap, it only had $15,000 miles on it, and we got it for a decent price including a 10-year, 100,000-mile bumper-to-bumper warranty, which ought to make it relatively easy to own for the long haul. By the time the warranty's up, two of my three kids will be out of high school.

It was a grueling process. We spent less than an hour meeting our salesman and test-driving the minivan we'd end up buying. Then we spent the next six hours screwing around with negotiations (which were the usual bullshit - "I've got to run that past my manager. Oh my manager can't do that, how about this?" and so on) and an endless stream of paperwork that seemed to take all day because it literally did. We got there at 10:30 in the morning and didn't finish until 6 PM. Egads, that was an awful experience.

So at the moment we have two minivans. That was my wife's clever idea - since we really, really need to have a minivan and since we know the Venture is limping along for some indeterminate amount of time, she suggested that we replace the car with a minivan, and then we would have the option to get a sedan or an SUV or something else when the Venture finally dies. I thought that was pretty smart.

I'm not unhappy with where we ended up - the price was okay and we've got what we need to move our family around. It was an annoying process to be sure, but mostly I'm just ticked that the Grand Am died so unexpectedly and so much sooner than I'd hoped. Now to see how much life we can squeeze out of the Venture. And then we get to start the process all over again. Ugh. Stupid cars.

[Karate] My Family Performs Live!

2011-02-24T06:00:00.003-05:00

We did it! Yesterday we appeared live on 9WSYR's Bridge Street morning show as part of their segment with Five Star Martial Arts. Check it out here:

Pretty sweet, huh? What a blast! It's been a couple of years since I've been on live TV or on a TV set, so it was super cool to be back at it again, even just for a few minutes. Even better, this was of course a marketing opportunity for Five Star, and I thought it really hit the mark.

Five Star's prime emphasis is on training families, and it's been an amazing success. Something like 60% of their students are families - parents and kids, brothers and sisters, all spending quality time together working out, getting fit, and building confidence (when they could just as easily be munching on a bag of chips in front of the boob tube!). I think that's terrific, and it comes across in that segment loud and clear.

The funny thing - and this is a manifestation of live TV that's unscripted and generally unplanned - is that we only did about half of what we'd intended. We had a whole kata ready to go that there just wasn't time to get to. But instead, they really drilled in on the qualities that make Five Star great, which was even better.

Best of all, we went for pizza at Pavone's Pizza afterward, pretty much my favorite pizza joint on the planet. Yeah, I ate way too much pizza, but I don't care. I only get to Pavone's a couple times a year, so I make the best of it when I do.

Bridge Street!

2011-02-23T06:00:00.000-05:00

Today's article is going to be particularly short. My family's going to be on live TV today, hopefully looking awesome as we demonstrate some karate! I'll try to post some video here as soon as possible!

2010 Year in Review

2011-02-22T06:00:00.003-05:00

Yeah, I know, it's mid-February. This is one of those articles I started working on and then got distracted, but 2010 was ultimately a pretty decent year, and one that I still felt deserved to be summarized.

The year 2010 wasn't just a sort of crummy follow-up to the classic 2001: A Space Odyssey. Oh no, it was an actual collection of months (twelve of them by my count) in which various and sundry stuff happened. Some of that stuff happened to me. That's mostly what I care about, so I won't belabor the natural disasters, celebrity goings-on, political turmoil and other junk. John Steward and Stephen Colbert already covered those much more humorously than I ever could. I'm just going to focus on myself.

2010 was the year I started to get back into shape. I used to be in shape. And yeah, I know "round is a shape," but that's not what I mean. I mean I was in great shape back when I met my wife. I was hitting the Aikido dojo sometimes three hours a night, and usually four or five days a week. I was lifting weights, jogging, doing calisthenics, and there's no doubt that I was absolutely in the best shape of my life. Of course, I didn't have a girlfriend or much of anything to do, so I had lots of time for working out. Once that changed - I got engaged, finished college and got a job - I found I didn't have nearly as much time for fitness anymore. Plus, let's be honest, I never liked exercise all that much (Aikido was the exception - I loved that), and I was only doing it because I really, really wanted a girl to call my own. Once I had one, some of that motivation dissipated.

Regardless of the rhyme or reason, I definitely fell off the wagon there. I ate and drank a lot of calories and didn't do much to burn them off, to the point where by around 2000 I had swollen to 225 pounds. I stayed at that weight for around 10 years. I tried to get fit every so often. I bought a treadmill. That didn't help. Then I tried using the treadmill, but surprisingly that didn't really help, either. Which was discouraging. I counted calories, but that didn't help. Counting them wasn't my problem - eating them was the problem. 2010 changed all of that at last. I started karate in the spring, and started controlling my calories during the summer. By fall, I had lost 10 pounds, and by the end of the year I was up to 15! By mid-February, I'm actually brushing the edges of 25, which is awesome, but that'll have to wait for some other article, because it wasn't cool enough to have happened in 2010.

While I'm on the subject, 2010 was also the year I started my third or, arguably, fourth style of martial art. I did Tae Kwon Do for about a year as a kid under Albert Fortunato. I quit because I was a teenager who couldn't decide what he really wanted, and because being lazy is easier than doing Tae Kwon Do. Then as a college student I trained in Aikido for about a year at Aikido of Central New York. Which was awesome, but
I quit that, too, because I was poor and really needed to focus on starting my career. Which are also excuses, sort of, but they're true as well.

My wife, being a second-degree black belt in Goju-Ryu karate, was able to train me for a bit in her style, and then I also trained in it for two months under David Oddy in 2010, but there's no denying I'm a raw novice at that style. But 2010 was the year that I started training in Kenpo at Five Star Martial Arts, and it's my intention to stick with it for the long haul. If nothing else, it's been a huge help to me in getting back into shape and dropping all this weight.

But my past training also factored in to the year 2010. As I mentioned above, I got in those two months of Goju Ryu, where believe it or not I actually learned a lot in a very short time. But in addition, I actually attended my first Aikido training in over eighteen years, when Aikido of CNY hosted a seminar with a Sensei from Bermuda. It was great, and really reminded me how much I'd loved Aikido. I got to see some old, familiar faces and meet some new people.

2010 was also the year that I really got working on my novel - to the tune of a prologue and sixteen whole chapters written. That's less than half the total novel, which sucks because my original timeline over-optimistically called for me to finish the book by May of 2010. But it's a significant chunk of work, anyway, and I'm really proud of it. I'll be prouder when the damn thing's done, of course.

I wrote a short story, too. About a wizard. It was okay - I didn't really love it, but it was tailored to a particular anthology I was trying to get into. I actually came up with a huge list of "wizard-oriented" short stories that I may have to write up some day. I was quite taken with a few of them.

In the year 2009, I started learning to play the guitar. But in the year 2010, I gave my first semi-public guitar performance. Which is crazy, I know. And it wasn't very good, but it wasn't all that bad, either. I'm pretty proud of that. It would have been easy enough to utterly suck, but I didn't. I played for about three hours, through around eighteen different tunes plus some aimless strumming while people ate and chatted. That was pretty cool, but I'm not in any rush to play my next gig.

On a related note, no pun intended, 2010 was also the year I started playing the electric guitar. Which is really great, because it opens up a whole different sound and a wealth of different tunes I can play. My kids were busy, too - they started three new instruments: flute, piano and tin whistle. Aren't they cute?

As with most years, in 2010 I read a couple dozen books (at least). Some of them were really good.

In 2010, my family went to the Renaissance Faire twice in one season. For me, it was the first time in over fifteen years that I'd done that, and I don't think any of the rest of us ever had. I love the Renaissance Faire, and being able to play a dozen or so different faire tunes on my guitar gave me profound joy.

Lastly, but by no means least, 2010 was the year we adopted our cat. That's related to the fact that 2010 was the year I began my allergy shots. They're both expected to last for many years. I enjoy the cat quite a bit more.

All of that - and more - packed into twelve measly months.

28 Pokes in the Eye, a Retrospective

2011-02-21T06:00:00.004-05:00

Oddly enough, it turns out that cats aren't real happy about being poked in the eye.

You see, a few weeks ago we noticed that my cat's eye was swollen, so we took her in to see the vet. She determined that Dutchess, our cat, had a respiratory infection. The way to fight it off was to give her some brown goop to stimulate her immune system and to put some different brown goop in her eyes to kill the infection there.

Now, nobody likes having medicine jammed onto their eyeball, cats included. But cats are essentially walking food processors, capable at a moment's notice of slicing, dicing and julienning whatever comes into range. So HER discomfort becomes MY discomfort.

Over the course of the two-week treatment regimen, I had to apply medication to her eyes twice a day. The cat and I both learned a lot as those days went by. I got better at putting the medicine in her eyes quickly and gently. She learned new ways to make it harder. It was an ongoing game of one-upsmanship, a game of cat and mouse, but with a 200-pound human in place of the mouse.

At first, I would find her and carry her into the kitchen, where my wife would be waiting with a blanket to wrap her tightly and keep her from moving. She taught me not to simply grasp her with both hands, because that left her back feet free to swipe at me. I still have a two-inch scab on my wrist where she sliced me open.

I taught her how to tell time. She would get to know approximately what time in the evening we tended to dose her, so she'd go hide under one of the kids' beds, as far back in the corner as possible, where we almost couldn't quite reach her. She taught me to grab her firmly by the scruff of the neck and carry her that way, as it rendered her completely immobile, unable to bite or claw me while I carried her to the waiting blanket.

Finally, she taught me that it was possible to swaddle her myself and apply the ointment all alone. This was common on days when my wife left for work before we'd had a chance to administer the medication. It became more routine after the few times I showed up with the angry cat dangling from her neck-skin to find that my wife had found something more interesting to do than wait with the blanket while I fetched the cat.

Twenty-eight times, I found that cat and treated her. Fifty-six separate doses, one in each eye. She growled and hissed. I occasionally bled. We were both deeply relieved when it was over, though she still tends to hide under the bed at night. Some lessons, hard learned, are hard to let go.

Book Analysis: Ed Parker's Kenpo Karate Part II

2011-02-16T06:00:00.004-05:00

Yesterday I introduced the first work of American Kenpo Grandmaster Ed Parker: Kenpo Karate, the Law of the Fist and the Empty Hand. The book is divided into two courses. Course 1 covers basics from the wearing of the uniform to exercises and conditioning to basic strikes with hands and feet. Course 2 is an in-depth examination of specific responses to a wide range of attack scenarios.

Grandmaster Parker begins with a look at the theory about speed, power, accuracy, and distance. Parker writes about how all work together to make an effective strike, and that lacking certain ones - particularly distance, can make even the best attack fail.

Beyond that, the remainder of the book is a series of self-defense techniques. I found these very interesting both for what was and was not there. Let me digress for a moment.

As best as I can ascertain, the style of Kenpo I'm currently learning follows a lineage as so:

1. Grandmaster Parker trained Al Tracy and his brothers throughout the 1960s.
2. Al Tracy trained Lee Thompson, who opened a "Tracy Kenpo" school in Liverpool, NY.
3. That school was eventually transferred to Steve LaVallee, who would change the name to Steve LaVallee's Sport Karate and later to LaVallee's East Coast Karate and LaVallee's USA Black Belt Champions.
4. LaVallee operated the school along with Rick Iannuzzo, who I've been told was primarily responsible for curriculum content and direct instruction. Eventually (in the early 1990s, I think) Iannuzzo would open his own school, and LaVallee went on to open more than a dozen facilities in Upstate NY and Florida.
5. In 2010, FiveStar Martial Arts opens in North Syracuse, NY, under the instruction of Paul Napoli and Curtis Pastore. Both studied in the 1990s under Steve LaVallee and Rick Iannuzzo, then trained independently while pursuing their education.

You'll note that I'm not citing sources for this information. That's a topic for another article - it hasn't been easy to track down and the sources I've found haven't been easy to authenticate and verify with what I'd consider to be a high degree of journalistic or academic accuracy. My gut tells me that this is in the ballpark, however, which will have to be good enough for now.

Sometime after the departure of Napoli and Pastore from LaVallees around 2000, LaVallee's moved, at least in spirit, completely away from their Kenpo roots and adopted a Mixed (or blended, depending on who you ask) Martial Arts curriculum that also included some heavily-modified Kenpo kata and self-defense techniques. But what Napoli and Pastore teach is, at least ostensibly, Kenpo.

It's just not the same Kenpo you'd see at a modern Tracy-style or Parker-style karate dojo, however. At least, not from the evidence I've found online. And it's the changes, the metamorphosis of the style and the techniques over the years, that fascinate me. Who decided to do a certain technique this way rather than that other way? Who decided to change a particular kata to eliminate certain moves and modify others to the point where it's only superficially similar to its original form? And, most importantly, why were those changes made? Were they deliberate efforts to water down a challenging curriculum to make it more accessible to younger students? Or were they carefully-considered decisions about body mechanics, force, and the need to develop certain skills? Or some combination of both? Or something else completely?

This information is particularly difficult to pin down, because even the originators of the style - Parker and the Tracy brothers - made their own modifications over the years, both before and after they trained together as well as before and after they taught people like Lee Thompson. So the differences I'm seeing between modern-day Parker Kenpo and modern-day FiveStar Kenpo could have been introduced by any of at least six different people (Parker, Tracy, Thompson, LaVallee, Iannuzzo and/or Napoli/Pastore (who for the purposes of this exercise count as one entity)) at any point in the last thirty to forty years.

For instance, who decided that the makiwara (or the striking board) and the buckets of flour used to condition the fingertips were no longer necessary? You won't find either at the FiveStar dojo, nor did I ever see them at LaVallee's. Did Parker himself move away from them? Did the Tracys decide they preferred more modern equipment? Thompson? LaVallee? Iannuzzo? I have no idea, but they're definitely there in Parker's first book and they're entirely missing from the dojos I've trained at in 2010 and 2011. The Okinawan "Hojo Undo" training equipment and techniques didn't just disappear from Kenpo, either - they tend to be largely absent from nearly all western martial arts dojos.

At some point, both the Parker and Tracy styles of Kenpo developed a complex series of named techniques, using fanciful terms for everything from a left-handed attack to a ridgehand (or sword-hand) strike to a grab of the hair. You'd end up with technique names including (and these are actual Parker Kenpo techniques) delayed sword, mace of aggression, and captured twigs. These technique names, at least, are entirely missing from LaVallee and FiveStar kenpo. Why? Were they invented after Thompson finished his training under Tracy (I'm almost certain they were not), or did LaVallee or Iannuzzo decide to change them? I suspect the techniques - most of them, anyway - are still around in some form or another, but the colorful names have been simplified to "two-handed wrist grab" instead of "captured twigs." Again, who decided that and why?

So to bring that lengthy digression back around, one of the things I looked for in Parker's first book were similarities and differences between the defense techniques he presented and the ones I'm learning now. What's interesting is that I saw both.

For example, the two-handed wrist grab (which in this early book is called simply that - nothing colorful or fanciful) is actually very similar to how I've been taught it at FiveStar (and quite different from the same technique as it was taught to me at LaVallee's). Likewise, the cross-hand wrist grab is extremely similar to how I've been taught it at FiveStar, though a bit more detailed. It's also very much in line with a technique used in the Short 3 kata as I've been taught it at FiveStar.

There's a defense technique against a side-shoulder grab that's entirely different than the one I've learned at FiveStar. Nothing too surprising about that, as the bulk of the techniques from Parker's book are more different than similar. But what's fascinating to me is that the technique shown in the book is completely in line with yet another movement in the Short 3 kata. So while it's different in one portion of the curriculum, it's the same somewhere else. Furthermore, Sensei Napoli explained that the more advanced version of that side-shoulder-grab defense is actually very much like what's shown in the book, I'm just not far enough along in my training to have seen it yet.

Other than those techniques, the other dozen or so are all completely different than what I'd seen at either of the two dojos I've trained at. Could it be that there will be more similarities at more senior ranks? Or could it be that, like the colorful names, but techniques themselves have changed over the years as different instructors each put their own spin on them? Heck, it isn't as if there's only one way to defend against these attacks. I have to constantly resist the habits I developed studying Aikido, which also had very effective defenses against these sorts of assaults.

Overall, I found Parker's book a fascinating window into the origins of this most American (or Americanized, if you will) of martial arts styles. I found that much of what Parker espoused, from breathing to conditioning to specific strikes, was covered in much greater depth and detail than I've seen in my training. Again, that could be because I still have much to learn, or it may simply be that some of Parker's original message and philosophy wasn't carried on through the entire forty year journey to today's practice of the style he practiced. As I continue my own training, I'll be looking for more hints of Parker's influence (or lack thereof) and seeking a greater understanding of the skills I'm being taught, as well as the changes introduced over the years that affected how those specific skills are practiced today. But I certainly would recommend Parker's book to anyone who wants a first-hand look at the origins of Kenpo Karate in America.

Book Analysis: Ed Parker's Kenpo Karate

2011-02-15T06:00:00.001-05:00

The Law of the Fist and the Empty Hand

This was the first of many books that Kenpo Grandmaster Ed Parker wrote on the subject of karate. It's written as an introduction to the history and specific techniques of the style he popularized, and forms the foundation for the style he would create and refine throughout his life.The book itself is split into two main sections - a beginner's course and an intermediate course. They were very different and each warrant their own analysis.

Course 1:

After the introduction, where Parker shares some of the history of the style and some basic precepts, he covers in extraordinary detail one item that is surprising both in the amount of space he dedicates to it and the extent to which it seems to have been largely lost by modern western martial artists (and, as far as I can tell, Asian ones as well). That item: the proper folding of the dogi karate uniform. Given that the uniform was not generally familiar to a western readership back in the 1960s, it's not surprising that he would cover how to wear and tie both the dogi and the obi, or belt. But he spends a surprising amount of time in both words and pictures detailing how to fold the dogi trousers and jacket, ultimately folding them inside each other and wrapping the entire package in the obi (belt). It's a fascinating insight into what Parker was taught and considered important at that time, and how much things have changed in the U.S. martial arts since.

Another interesting section focuses on breathing. Parker goes into considerable depth about inhalation, exhalation, and the effect of breathing on the power of your attack and defense. It was information I had learned back when I was first training in Tae Kwon Do, and again while training in Aikido, but interestingly it wasn't really something I heard in nearly as much depth while training in Kenpo. Which may have been coincidence that I just missed those particular lectures or perhaps I wasn't paying good enough attention, but Parker certainly was. I thought it was an excellent section that did a really good job of underscoring the effect that breathing has on physical activity, especially hand-to-hand combat.

The section after went into quite a bit of depth about training and conditioning equipment. Without using the Japanese terminology, Parker writes at length about the Makiwara striking board, including very specific directions about how to build one. He also discusses a wide array of other calisthenics, stretches, and methods for conditioning the hands, limbs and feet. These tools and techniques - called Hojo Undo by the Okinawans - have never seemed to be popular or well-known in the western practice of karate, so I found it fascinating that Parker was not only intimately familiar with them, but actually included them in his book.

Another topic that Parker investigated in detail in his book was human anatomy. He includes detailed anatomy charts that actually highlight those areas most likely to cause death. He discusses the anatomy of the martial artist's body weapons - punches, kicks, and other strikes - as well as opponent targets.

Out of all of that, however, the most fascinating thing about Course 1, for me, was that all of the movements that I've always seen taught as blocks (with one exception, below) are in this book clearly taught as strikes. This includes all four of the primary "blocks" typically taught in the west - the inward and outward block, the upward block and the downward block. In Parker's novel, these are all strikes. I learned them as blocks in Tae Kwon Do. I learned them as blocks in both forms of Kenpo and Kenpo-derived MMA I've been studying for the last year. My wife learned them as blocks in the style of Goju-Ryu karate she trained in for many years. In fact, the only time I'd ever considered that they could be strikes was when I was training at Syracuse Jundokan under David Oddy. Clearly the karate that Parker learned in the 1950s and wrote about in his book is closer to traditional Okinawan karate than what's been taught in my neck of the woods over the last twenty years or more. Amazing!

Now, to be fair, the book goes on to explain how those same strikes can be used as blocks, but it's clearly not their primary function. They're actually closer to the atemi I learned in Aikido - painful, distracting blows to the nerve centers that punish an immobilize an attacker - than simple blocks meant to ward off an opponent's attack.

So to summarize course 1 - wow, how things have changed over the last fifty years. The karate Parker learned and wrote about in his book barely resembles what I've seen and been taught over the years. Tomorrow - course 2!

Valentine's Day!

2011-02-14T06:00:00.001-05:00

I admit, I'm of two minds about Valentine's Day. On the one hand, it started as a marketing ploy by the greeting card industry that's exploded into a cash bonanza for restaurants, florists, candy shops, and, naturally, Hallmark. So on the one hand, playing into that bugs me a little.

On the other hand, why shouldn't we have a special day to recognize love and romance and those we share them with? Even if the motivations that created the holiday were purely capitalist, I admit that I enjoy celebrating it. This year went especially well.

My wife and I have for most of our relationship tried to avoid spending a fortune on this holiday. Many years ago we initiated a ritual of having Chicken Parmigiana for dinner on Valentine's Day. It's mostly for me, really. I don't much want flowers and candy's not good for me, so we settled on a really nice meal. I'd still generally get something for my wife - a card and some chocolate wouldn't be uncommon. This year, I bumped up the intensity a little. So did the kids, as it turned out.

For my part, I made some cards for my wife and kids. Yeah, okay, they were zombie-themed valentine's cards. It turns out, there's a LOT of Valentines zombie art on the Internet, with expressions like "I brain you" with the brain shaped like a heart. I thought it was cute - the kids were pleasantly grossed out.

Next, I took a box of Brach's candy hearts and unboxed them. Then I licked the sayings off about half of them, and wrote my own with a red pen. Then I put them back in the box and glued it closed.

Lastly, I wanted to get my wife some candy, but I wanted to stick with candies that were nut-safe. This pretty much ruled out any of the Valentine's Heart-boxes you can get anywhere. There's always "Vermont Nut-safe Chocolates," but like a lot of chocolatiers, their boxes ended up costing more than a dollar-per-candy. That's an outrage and I won't pay it. Instead, I decided to go the hand-crafted route and see how inexpensively I could put together something really nice.

I went to the craft store and picked up an inexpensive heart-shaped tin box, some Valentine's ribbon, and some Valentine's napkins. I also bought some heart-shaped Post-it notes at Staples and a couple boxes of nut-free Junior Mints at the grocery store. I glued the ribbon onto the box, lined it with the napkin (after cleaning it thoroughly with spray-cleaner and soapy water to make sure it was food-safe), and poured in two big movie-size boxes of candy.

Next, I waited until my wife was asleep, and hid the box behind the Wii console on our TV. Then I took the Post-It notes and created a scavenger hunt all over the house, with each note giving a clue to where the next note could be found. I hid them all over - under kettlebells, on the gerbil cage, in the spice rack and in the china cabinet. There was one hidden among the potatoes and another under the can of cat food in the fridge. I even hid one inside my son's library book, "The Devil's Arithmetic." The clue for that one was, "to find your next step, you must do Lucifer's Math." I was pretty pleased with that.

The two older kids were actually the first ones up on Valentine's Day. They'd spent much of the day Saturday making a plethora of undersea creatures out of paper and hot glue. They'd made them kissing each other or decorated with hearts, colored them, and attached string. First thing in the morning, they raced downstairs to decorate the kitchen, turning it into an "Enchantment Under the Sea" Valentine's fest of a sort not seen since Back to the Future. There were balloons and aquatic life everywhere. My wife added some little baskets of treats for everyone, and then it was off to the scavenger hunt!

For some reason my wife got me Flash underwear (you know, the DC Comics hero who runs really fast?). They're basically underoos, which I haven't had since I was a little kid. Too bad she's the only one who'll ever see them.

My whole family took the chance to show our love for each other and to make each other happy, which is really what the day is all about for us. We didn't spend a lot of money to do it, either. Add in some absolutely delicious Chicken Parmigiana for dinner (with enough leftovers to last me two days!) and I'm calling Valentine's Day 2011 a huge success!

Working Harder. Smarter is Optional

2011-02-10T06:00:00.001-05:00

There are some white-collar jobs where you put in your work-day and then you go home. You get done as much as possible, do your job as well as you can, but when it's 5:00 PM your day is done. There are other jobs where you're expected to put in "as much time as necessary" to get your work done, and that amount of time is often well in excess of the standard 40 hours. In the U.S. for the last 15 years (at least), jobs in Information Technology have tended to fall in the latter category. It sucked, I didn't like it, and I don't see me ever doing it again unless I'm simply desperate for money or so incredibly thrilled with my job that I don't mind throwing my fatherly responsibilities right out the window.

When I worked at MONY, the official "work week" was something like 36 hours, with the expectation that you'd take around 30 minutes a day for lunch. You could work longer, but it wasn't really expected on a regular basis. However, the guys who ran the company really wanted to cash in. These wealthy fellows needed more $20s to light their cigars (which were made of $100s) with, so they decided to beef up the company's financial position so they could sell her off. Which they ultimately did, but only after an awful lot of people put a ton of time and effort into making the company purr along like a kitten. We put in huge hours with absolutely no extra pay or compensation. And the worst part? We totally knew that the end result would be to sell the company, that we'd get zilch out of it, and that most or all of us would likely lose our jobs as a result. All of which is exactly what happened. If you wonder when the idea of company loyalty died for me, it was right then and there (I put the date around 2000 or 2001).

I've mentioned before that I've worked for the same boss at a couple of different places. Both times, I put in incredible hours under physically painful amounts of stress, mostly because the guy simply couldn't differentiate between how much work he wanted things to be and how much effort actually went into them. He contributed great things to my overall career, but I'm indescribably glad to be out of that rat-race for a while.

One of the funniest things at my last job was our time-tracking system. We were supposed to enter all of our hours with scrupulous honesty, and we weren't supposed to enter any more than 40 hours per week (because that's all we were supposed to be working). And the VP of HR made it very clear that if you were routinely or continuously working more than 40 hours, there was something wrong with your job, your work, or your boss's expectations and it needed to be fixed. That's an admirable policy, by the way. Yet there was no way I could come close to getting everything my boss wanted done in 40 hours, and it typically took me more like 50 hours, and occasionally as much as 55 hours, and I still wasn't getting anywhere close to all of it done. The pile of stuff I just couldn't possibly get to simply grew and grew. And there I was - required to enter all my hours, unable to enter more than 40 hours on a regular basis, and yet expected to work 50+ hours to even get the major "must-do" work finished. My boss had no clever solution for that, so I just ended up lying about my hours and only entering the first 8 hours I worked every day.

Sadly, this has become standard practice all over America in lots of different industries. As companies look to save money, one of the ways they do it is to reduce headcount and just make those who remain - who are usually delighted to have jobs - pick up the slack. There's only so much you can do to gain efficiency, to be "smart" about how you do your work. If you're doing the work of two or three people, you're just going to have to work longer hours or decide not to get everything done. And that's not good for anybody, including the company.

Employees who work incredible overtime, skip vacations, don't have a second to catch their breath and yet still don't get everything done? They're under incredible stress. They're going to crash and burn at some point. And the company's going to reap the whirlwind. I don't know if I'll ever make another dime on my writing - lord knows I made little enough on the stuff I published in the past - but I'd like to think that I'm smart enough to avoid ever working another crazy-hard job again. And American executives would be wise to make better use of their people so they can get the long-term benefits of their skills and knowledge without burning them out. But that calls for real leadership, not just wishful thinking.

2011 Big-Ticket Movies

2011-02-09T06:00:00.002-05:00

I know, I never did my 2nd Annual movie round-up for the coming year. But 2011 is shaping up to have some really fantastic-looking movies that are worth getting excited (and writing) about. Here are the ones I'm most looking forward to:

Battle: Los Angeles - Aliens invade and wipe out city after city around the globe. Humanity makes a last stand in LA, where a platoon of marines led by Aaron Eckhardt are mankind's only hope. It's pitched as a low-budget modern-day war movie and it sounds like it'll be terrific if they can pull it off. There's a trailer here. Due out March 11th.

Thor - part of Marvel Comics' massive movie crossover, this film introduces us to the Norse god of thunder. He gets up to some hijinks in the home of the gods, Asguard, and is cast out by his father, Odin, king of the gods. Separated from his powerful hammer, Mjolner, Thor must make his way in the world, regain his godly powers, and thwart the plans of his evil half-brother Loki. Thor will team up next year with Iron Man, Captain America, the Incredible Hulk and other heroes in the Marvel spectacular, The Avengers. Stars Star Trek's Chris Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins and Natalie Portman. Directed by Kenneth Branagh. Check out a trailer here. Due to hit theaters on May 6th.

Priest - May's going to be a busy month, and I'm REALLY looking forward to Priest. The premise is that in the far future, the Earth has been decimated in a war between humans and vampires. Finally, the vampires were beaten, thanks mostly to an order of priests who wielded magical powers. The problem is that everyone thinks the vampires are destroyed except for one lone ex-priest. He wants his powers back to stop the vampires from making a comeback, and the ruling members of his old order just want to keep the status quo. So he must defy his own people and take on a horde of vampires with just a couple of friends to help him out. Stars Paul Bettany, Nikita's Maggie Q., and Karl Urban. Due May 13th. The trailer's here.

Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides - Okay, okay, I know - the last couple Pirates of the Caribbean movies were kind of crummy. I agree. But hey, Johnny Depp is always a blast in his Captain Jack Sparrow persona, so even if the rest of the movie sucks, just watching him prance around and say, "savvy?" for two hours is usually a decent way to spend an afternoon. Plus, this one has Penelope Cruz and premiers on May 20th, my anniversary! This movie lacks Kiera Knightly and Orlando Bloom, but they couldn't save the last two. The goal of the fourth film is to find the Fountain of Youth. Or something. Who cares? You're going to go see it, regardless. You can watch the trailer here.

X-Men: First Class - Probably the best news about this film is that it does not continue the truly awful storyline from the third and last X-Men movie. Man, that third film stunk up the place. Instead, this X-Men movie returns to the origins of the X-Men from their 1960s comic books. It has a wide array of different super-mutants all coming together to fight the bad guys and look cool in their yellow costumes. I have high hopes for this movie and am really looking forward to seeing it. It's out June 3rd and mostly stars a lot of people I've never heard of. And Kevin Bacon.

Super 8 - I actually don't know much about this movie, except that it's about a kid with a Super 8 camera (the film kind, I presume) and an alien invasion. But it's created by Stephen Spielberg and J.J. Abrams (the guy behind Alias, Lost and the Star Trek reboot) so that tends to make me believe it'll be pretty good. It's out on June 10th and the trailer is here.

Green Lantern - Yes, it's a tremendous summer for super-hero movies. Most of them are from Marvel comics - Thor, X-Men and Captain America - but DC Comics gets in on the action, too, with the hotly-anticipated Green Lantern. It's the story of Air Force test pilot Hal Jordan, played by Ryan Reynolds, who is selected by the alien Guardians of Oa to join their cadre of intergalactic peacekeepers, the Green Lantern Corps. Each of them is issued a ring of incredible power, one that lets them overwhelm the forces of evil and maintain peace throughout the universe. They each take an oath, and renew it each night as they recharge their power rings: "In Brightest Day, In Blackest Night, No Evil Shall Escape My Sight. Let those who Worship Evil's Might, Beware my Power, Green Lantern's Light!" Meet Hal Jordan as Green Lantern on June 17th. The trailer's at the movie's website.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows 2 - the eighth and final installment of the Harry Potter series is coming at the height of the summer movie series. See Harry finally face his nemesis Voldemort as the forces of evil descend on the worlds of wizards and muggles alike. See it in theaters July 15th. If there's a trailer out yet, I can't find it.

Captain America: The First Avenger - it's World War II, the "Great Crusade," and 100-pound weakling Steve Rogers just wants to do his part against the evil Axis forces. Sadly, he's 4-F, unfit to serve. Until he's injected with a revolutionary "super-serum," that turns him into a man among men. Outfitted with a bulletproof shield and his partner Bucky Barnes, Cap learns there are worse things loose in Europe than the Nazis. The third part of Marvel Comics' massive movie crossover, Cap will end up taking a 60-year siesta so he can join the Avengers (see Thor, above). Stars Chris Evans (from Star Trek) and Hugo Weaving (from the Matrix and Lord of the Rings series). See a trailer here. Opens July 22nd.

Cowboys and Aliens - Daniel Craig walks into an old west town wearing a mysterious gauntlet on his hand. The local toughs start to give him a hard time, but suddenly alien ships speed down out of the sky, blasting everything in sight. Craig calmly raises his gauntleted arm, and laser-blasts one of the mysterious craft out of the sky. Also stars Harrison Ford, Olivia Wilde and Sam Rockwell. It's out on July 29th. The trailer is here.

Rise of the Apes - a sort-of prequel to the Planet of the Apes movies, this film explores the way the apes were modified to speak and the war that erupts between men and their creations. Stars James James Franco and John Lithgow. Opens November 23rd.

So is there anything I missed that you're looking for? I just don't get very excited about dramas, comedies or chick-flicks, and I've never gotten too worked up about the Transformers movies (but if that's your thing, look for Transformers: Dark of the Moon on July 1st). There's also a new Three Musketeers coming out, but like a handful of others that might eventually grab my attention, I haven't heard anything about it. Besides, just the films on the list above already far exceed the actual amount of money I have to spend at the movies this year.

A Five-Year Mission

2011-02-08T06:00:00.017-05:00

Americans are huge fans of instant gratification. They don't like being told that it takes years of intensive practice to finally be good enough to qualify as a beginner. I'm as guilty of this as anyone. I've been playing the guitar for less than two years and I'm continually frustrated that I don't sound anything like Eddie Van Halen, Richie Sambora, or Eric Clapton. And you see it all the time in the martial arts.

You very rarely hear in the U.S. that achieving one's black belt is a sign of finally being ready to truly learn. Quite the opposite - many modern karate schools often bombard their students with the black belt as a goal. A finish-line. The end. And for many students, that's exactly what it is. They get their black belts and they're done - game over.

Karate can be (and many would argue should be) a lifelong pursuit of excellence, of knowledge, of technical perfection. But in the U.S., it's often seen as a quick way to make a buck - pull in a bunch of little kids, get them hooked into the program for 5-7 years till they get their black belts, and then turn them over and bring in a new batch.

I recently looked into training in Tai Chi, and had a somewhat surprising conversation with the Sifu running the program. I'd done some amount of research, and found it was somewhat common for Tai Chi programs to advertise that new students could learn the basics of their form in as little as four months. The Sifu I talked to was having none of that. He told me that authentic, traditional Tai Chi - like the form he teaches - is the hardest, most challenging martial art he's ever studied. And students should expect to be beginners for at least five years, assuming they practiced diligently. It wasn't a very good sales pitch (and I'm sure he knew that), but it was extremely refreshing to hear from an American instructor.

I actually think this process is one of the things that attracts me about the martial arts. As much as I'm anxious to learn more and I look forward to one day earning my black belt, I can see a progression of improvement over many, many years ahead of me. I don't want it to be something I hop into and finish a short time later. I want to challenge myself to be better. I want to reshape myself physically and mentally. Even more, I want my kids to see the long-term benefits of the martial arts. I can't know whether they'll stick with it for life, but I can influence them while they're here with me and as long as I can afford it (which is always a challenge when you have five people training) I'm going to strongly encourage them to continue to learn, to improve. I want the martial arts to infuse them with strength of arm and strength of spirit. I'd like them to feel the connection to hundreds of years of history - of meditation, contemplation, sweat and blood and exertion to the point where it feels like you must break, but then you somehow push just a little further. You don't get there on the five-year plan.

I know the dojo we're training at now embraces these sentiments, which is obviously important since we plan to be with them for the long haul. I also think that American martial arts is poised for an overhaul. I think the churn of little kids into and back out of the program - that's been going on for a good 20 years - may be susceptible to competition from dojos that embrace both traditional martial arts values (and knowledge and training) as well as the modern business practices that have helped make "Americanized" schools successful. I think that would be a huge benefit to all concerned. Well, except for those "Americanized" schools that refuse to adapt and embrace their roots, I suppose. But that's the nature of business, isn't it? Those same schools re-wrote the rules when they adapted adult-focused karate training into programs aimed at children. Now they'll just need to do it again.

What was Frank Herbert Thinking?

2011-02-07T06:00:00.001-05:00

I'm going to just say it - Dune Messiah is a terrible, boring, awful book. Taken on its own, it might have been merely okay, but as the direct sequel to the brilliant, epic, endlessly-fascinating DUNE, it's plain awful. Primarily because DUNE was filled with political intrigue, action, interesting and unique characters, and tons (and tons) of dramatic tension. Whereas in Dune Messiah, pretty much nothing happens. There's lots of thinking, and some talking, and more thinking, and a bit of maneuvering, but practically no payoff at all. (A guy gets stabbed. Big whoop.) I've read this book now at least three times, possibly as many as four, and I've hated it every time. Only after reading the excellent series of Dune novels by Herbert's son Brian Herbert and Kevin J. Anderson was I finally motivated to give the novel one more try. And, sure enough, having so much background on the characters, so much backstory, so much added life breathed into them and their actions, I was finally able to get through it. But for some forty years, all of that was missing, and the world was stuck with a truly craptacular sequel. Yes, yes, I know, lots of people love it. Bully for them - they're seeing something I'm missing, I guess. It's not for lack of trying on my part, and I've always felt you shouldn't really have to work that hard to enjoy a book.

After finishing Dune Messiah, I always moved on to Children of Dune. Again, it's a novel I've attempted as many as three previous times. In the past, I'd always put it down after a few chapters, just utterly worn out by how awful Dune Messiah was and finding Children of Dune to be more of the same. Well at last I can report: it's not! I really, really enjoyed it this time. There's action, there are interesting characters again, we get to see some old favorites, and Herbert's storytelling returns to a least a shadow of the brilliance we saw in DUNE. Which makes me wonder, "What was Herbert thinking when he wrote Dune Messiah?"

I went and read the plot summary on Wikipedia and, really, the book doesn't sound like it ought to be that bad. It just is. It's missing all the flare of DUNE, all the feeling of impending danger, all the spice, no pun intended, of the first novel. Bored me to tears time and again.

Anyway, I have to say that if you've ever felt this way about Dune Messiah, go and read the novels Paul of Dune and especially The Winds of Dune (originally titled Jessica of Dune, which I think was a better name for the second in the "Heroes of Dune" series). Then try the original sequels one more time. You may be surprised to find that Herbert and Anderson resuscitated this tired, old, broken novel and made it far more readable than it ever was before.

hiybbprqag

2011-02-04T12:30:00.000-05:00

Confused?

Let Colbert explain. Funny stuff, and hilarious to see Bing get busted by Google for cheating. Would have been just as funny the other way around, too - I'll take it any old which-way.

Crock Pot Chicken Stew!

2011-02-03T06:00:00.002-05:00

This is becoming one of my new favorite meals. Partly, that's because I like how it tastes, but I wouldn't say I love it, exactly. Given the choice, I would totally prefer pizza or alfredo primavera or chicken parmigiana. In a heartbeat. But the chicken stew is pretty good, it's fairly easy to make and, best of all, it's ridiculously low in calories!

It's pretty simple - some chicken thighs, 3 potatoes, a carrot, some gravy, water, a little wine, spices and you're done. The recipe actually calls for tomato paste, but we've always skipped that. We toss it all in the Crock Pot for the day and come dinner-time, we're chowing down. Best of all, one serving is a stupidly-low 200-250 calories (I usually end up with some extra chicken, so I call it 300 calories). Wait, 300 calories for a full, hearty, tasty, filling meal? Hell yeah!

We've decided to try mixing it up in the future, using beef, maybe meatballs, perhaps some kielbasa. We've even toyed with mixing chicken and beef, because we're freaking crazy and there's just no stopping us. But damn, that's a heck of a meal. We got it all ready to go last night, and this morning it's a quick pop into the Crock Pot and we're off and running. Can't wait to eat tonight!

The Sounds of Believin'

2011-02-02T06:00:00.003-05:00

Since this seems to be the week for short updates on stuff I'm doing, I thought I'd cover the guitar.

It's been a year and eight months since we started learning the guitar, and I'm still annoyed with my level of ability (or lack thereof). But I can see improvement, so that gives me hope and keeps me going.

I'm currently working on three very cool pieces of music.

The first is Bon Jovi's "Wanted, Dead or Alive." It's an awesome song originally played on a 12-string and musically it's just a great piece. It has taken a while to get the very recognizable intro down and we still have to play it somewhat slowly, but it's definitely there. Now we're adding in the body of the song and it's actually going pretty well. The toughest part is that the strum pattern is a little funky and there are some more complex fingerings in between the chords. It's taken me three weeks to get to where I can properly strum and finger the first set of D and D Suspended 4th chords, but today I totally nailed it (once) and it sounded great. I'm trying not to think about the guitar solo.

The next piece we're playing is Simon & Garfunkle's "The Sounds of Silence." It's not a tune I'd have ever thought about on my own, but our teacher wants us to learn to switch between two of the hardest barre chords - the F and the B-flat, and Sounds of Silence is filled with them. We're making progress, but ugh, those chords are tough. After more than a week of practice, we're not quite where we need to be either on forming the chords correctly or on switching between them, but it's getting better. And man, "Sounds of Silence" sounds awesome on the electric guitar. I'm really surprised that there's never been a popular cover of it with some heavy guitars, though Jack Blades and Tommy Shaw did a nice acoustic cover on one of their Blades/Shaw albums.

Lastly, we're taking on Journey. Specifically, the song "Don't Stop Believin'." It's an old favorite, and it just happens that a friend of my daughter's recently played it at a piano recital. After hearing her friend play it, my daughter just had to play it herself, so I got her the music. And look at that - it's got the guitar chords, too. What's even more serendipitous is that it uses exactly the chords my son and I have been learning for the last month - the Am7, Dm7, plus the Barre-F and Barre-B Flat. Five weeks ago, we wouldn't have known those chords (well, we knew a cheater-F chord and technically we'd learned B Flat back when we learned Paul McCartney's "Yesterday," but we definitely didn't know those minor-sevenths). Granted, we don't have the tablature so the guitar accompaniment we play doesn't sound anything like the guitars in the recorded version of the song, but I figure "Wanted, Dead or Alive" is enough of that sort of thing to work on for now anyway.

In another month or two, we'll start thinking about spring and wishing for summer which is, of course, Renaissance Faire season. I imagine we'll pick a lot of our folk, celtic and renn-faire songs back up again and give them some more play time to help get us in the mood.

But for now, we're Believin' in the Silence, Dead or Alive. And, as always, trying not to suck too badly.

Testimonial

2011-02-01T06:00:00.001-05:00

I thought I'd share the testimonial we wrote for FiveStar Martial Arts:

Training at FiveStar Martial Arts has been terrific for our family. We’ve gotten to watch our kids increase their coordination and flexibility while learning discipline and respect. Their focus and concentration have really improved, and they love learning and practicing the techniques. We’ve seen huge gains in our own cardiovascular health, endurance, strength, and fitness. Best of all, Mike’s lost over 20 pounds since he started training in karate! The dojo offers a warm, inviting atmosphere for our family to learn and train together. Sensei Napoli and Sensei Pastore offer an outstanding learning environment for us that’s fun and keeps us fit. We’re so glad to be a part of the FiveStar Family!

Mike and Karen De Lucia

We mean every word of it, too. They're off to a fantastic start and we're really getting a lot out of our training. Great job, FiveStar!

[Novel] Progress!

2011-01-31T06:00:00.003-05:00

A sort of progress, anyway. My writing goal for last week had three distinct levels - a "challenge" level, a "stretch" level, and a "normal" level. They looked like this:

Normal - complete edits and rewrites on Chapter 6
Stretch - complete edits and rewrites on Chapter 7
Challenge - complete edits and rewrites on Chapter 8

I'm pleased to say that I met the "stretch" level of my goal, successfully getting an edited Chapter 7 into my wife's waiting hands by the time she got home from work on Friday. I ended up making a fair number of revisions to Chapter 7, so I consider this a worthy accomplishment.

This week, on to Chapter 8. My recollection is that Chapter 8 needs a medium amount of revision, whereas Chapters 9 and 10 required rather minimal edits. If so, then completing up through Chapter 10 is my "Challenge" goal for the coming week. One caveat, though - I've always worried that Chapters 8-10, especially taken as a block, aren't sufficiently gripping. It may turn out to be necessary to make significant changes to them, which could throw my week out of whack. We'll see once I get into them. The good news, though, is that I finally feel like I'm moving ahead at last. Much of December and January seemed like slogging through honey - sweet and delicious, but freaking slow! I suppose my overall goal for February is to finish my re-writes of all existing chapters (up through 16) and be ready for new material in March. Ugh, that seems like an awfully long time, but it's probably the most realistic goal I can set at this point. Especially since the kids have a week of winter break coming up sometime soon, which will guarantee I get nothing done for that week. Wish me luck!

Right to Work!

2011-01-27T08:30:00.003-05:00

Just a short entry today - I'm diving right in to work. It's been a pretty productive week, even factoring in an early stop yesterday so I could attend a piano recital at my kids' school.

I posted on Tuesday that I really wanted to get at least chapter 6 done, and chapter 7 would be awesome. Well, I expect to "finish" chapter 7 this morning, with one caveat. My wife has been busy and she's a little behind giving me a "final read" on thee chapters, so I likely won't get her feedback right away. I don't consider these chapters truly finished until I've had her eyes on them to make sure I haven't missed anything major. But hell, I'm thrilled that 6 and 7 are almost done. I'm going to start in on chapter 8 today, and it's actually not out of the realm of possibility that 8 could be done by end of day tomorrow. That puts me halfway through my written chapters, and I'm expecting several of my later chapters to need minimal re-writing, because I've re-written them extensively already. On the other hand, chapters 11 and 12 have a half-page of notes that need to go into them, so those will slow me down. Such is life - two steps forward and one step back is preferable to the other way around.

I've also gotten some fresh information from another friendly stranger about the history of Kenpo karate here in Central New York. I'm really starting to think again that a conversation with Rick Iannuzzo and possibly Master Thompson (if I can track him down) would be very helpful in understanding my style's lineage. I just want to make sure before I do that that I've done my homework to know what I'm talking about before I try to conduct interviews with these experts.

I also need to spend some time documenting and organizing what I've already learned. I'm not sure when I'll be doing that, though.

Lastly, I've managed to accumulate another handful of handwritten notes pages that I need to organize and enter into my OneNote notebooks so they'll be useful. They include lots of notes for my current novel, as well as a handful of fresh story ideas (for new novels or short stories that I haven't worked on yet) and the odd note for my two novels that are "in the works" but not currently being actively written. Which is to say, I've got tons and tons of notes, research and reference material for them, but I haven't actually sat down as started to write them. One of those novels is definitely next up when the current one is done, and where I go after that will depend on how long it takes to write it and where I stand with my current novel in terms of publication. If things were to go well and somebody bit on my first novel quickly, I'd need to break off any other work to get that one ready for publication and probably move straight on to its two sequels. But that's all way in the future and topped with a generous dollop of wishful thinking.

Super in the U.S.A.

2011-01-26T08:30:00.000-05:00

America has a weird relationship with fictional superheroes. If a superhero movie is really good - like the original Christopher Reeve Superman, about half of the total Burton/Nolan Batman movies, the first two Spiderman movies, X-Men, etc. - Americans will embrace them. But comic books and graphic novels are still largely for geeks, and superhero media in general is pretty hit-or-miss, both in terms of quality and in terms of America's response.

Heroes, for instance, had an absolutely amazing first season, then it tanked and never ever got its mojo back. No Ordinary Family is doing pretty well, but will people stick with it and will it keep up the quality? The Cape is doing okay out of the gate, but hasn't exactly been a huge hit.

All of this made me wonder: why? Why are Americans luke-warm toward superheroes in general, and why is it so hard to make a great superhero story that captures peoples' attention?

Certainly the costumes can be a bit of a turn-off, if there are any. It's just hard to look cool in spandex, no matter what color it is or what you're doing.This is probably a big part of the reason that shows like Heroes, No Ordinary Family and even Smallville have tended to tone-down or avoid super-suits altogether.

Of course, eschewing the superhero outfit has its own down-side in terms of story. Without a mask, you're potentially recognizable, which puts your family in jeopardy. Also, in just ordinary clothes, it may be hard for the police to tell the hero from the villain, again putting you at risk. At the same time, these issues can create dramatic tension for the stories, so they're not entirely bad.

The powers themselves can be an issue, too. If the hero is unbelievably powerful, it's hard to create believable challenges for them that keep the story interesting. If the hero is too weak, it's potentially boring and offers too little material to keep a story going.

Moreover, the whole concept of superheroes existing in our daily lives is a tough nut to crack. How WOULD society react to these people? It seems likely that it would lead to all sorts of upheaval - hero supporters, vigilante protesters, and imitators, all looking to get involved. Then you've got the media, politicians, businesses and hucksters all looking to capitalize on the heroes and villains for their own nefarious purposes. It's a big mess, and the more "super" people you've got running around, the more the story has to account for peoples' reactions.

All of these issues aren't always handled well. There were no anti-spidey protesters in Spider-Man, but the anti-vigilante movement was a key aspect of the (far less successful) Watchmen film. When Tony Stark revealed his Iron Man identity in the Iron Man films, he got called before congress, but nobody except the police seem to have an opinion about Batman's antics.

Special effects and TV writing have come a long way since the arguable heyday of superhero television back in the 1970s, when you had the Six-Million-Dollar Man, The Bionic Woman, Wonder Woman, The Incredible Hulk and Spider-Man all on network television. But modern shows are as challenged as ever to find their audience.

I suspect that someday "genre" fiction, whether Sci-Fi, Fantasy, Hero or whatever will become completely mainstream and commonly-accepted at last, but it's not there yet. For instance, a running gag in No Ordinary Family is the lab-assistant who regularly references the X-Men and has a signed picture of Battlestar Galactica's Laura Roslyn. It's a gag because being interested in those things - especially if you're an attractive, intelligent woman - is comical in our society, even still. You don't hear the football players in the locker room arguing about whether the Justice League could beat The Avengers (they totally could), or at least I assume they probably don't. After all, I'm a comics geek - when have I ever been in a football team's locker room?

[Novel] Marching On

2011-01-25T06:00:00.002-05:00

Everything about this novel is taking longer than anticipated. Some of it is, admittedly, slacking off on my part. I'm sure I could squeeze another few hours of writing out of each week if I trimmed here and there and forced myself to write instead of doing other things. Some of it is that I hit a tough spot and I have to get up and walk away for a bit so my brain can figure out how to handle it. Some of it is just that this takes longer than it seemed like it would. And some of it is fear. I know some of where I need to go next, but there are key details about how to get there that I'm really struggling with.

For example - and this is just a very high-level look at a major issue - how to get a group of people across a significant distance, largely unassisted, when the whole area is infested with vampires. And before you think of fifteen clever ways to solve the problem, realize that the conditions of the world in which the novel takes place will invalidate all of them. There's no technological solution. There's no "series of armor-reinforced way-stations". There's no negotiating with the vampires.

I've actually come up with 2-3 solutions for this, two of which involve making decisions that vampires in my fictional world "can't smell you if you're covered in X" or "are driven off by Y" or whatever, but I have to be careful with that. If I modify them too much, it weakens them as an overall threat. For instance, if they can be driven off by Y, and Y isn't really that scarce, then why doesn't everybody just apply Y to their whole town as a vampire prophylactic?

The other solution involves a magic item - or two of them, actually, each with a different purpose - but I've been struggling with how to get them into the hands of the right people at the right time without raising questions of "Then why didn't Character 1 just use the magic item before?"

It's all fairly complex, at least as it currently sits in my mind. By the time I have it all figured out and written, it'll probably be much more straightforward and logical to the reader, who won't ever know how much brain-power went into telling that part of the story.

The good news is that the extra time this is taking me has given me the time I needed to work through those difficult issues. The worst thing I could have done would have been to attack them aggressively, make up some shitty workarounds, and just push on. I'd have ended up having to go back and change them later, anyway, and the ripple-effect of changing something major is a monumental editing effort. You have to find every word, every sentence that references or is affected by the change and fix it in every chapter impacted. Miss just one, and you've blown your story's continuity, at least for any readers who notice the discrepancy. Plus, I'm really not a big fan of re-writing, which is another reason this is taking so long.

I'm lucky when it comes to writing. I'm good enough at it that I can produce passable work the first time through, particularly in terms of things like essays and college papers, where I'm being judged not based on what I'm capable of at my best, but against the rest of the class and the teacher's (usually low) expectations. In high school and college, I was pretty much always able to hand in a rough draft and get an A. It saved me, frankly, because I was religiously opposed to re-writing. I hated it and pretty much refused to do it.

Now, I'm much more passionate and personally-invested in my novel than I ever was in any of those papers, so I'm willing to re-write to get it as close to perfect as possible. But I'm not going to be enthusiastic about it and I'm not going to do it all that quickly. So it is that I've been dragging my feet a bit the last couple of months, slowly working my way through a second or third (or sometimes fourth) pass at each chapter beginning at, well, the beginning. I'm now "done" with the first six chapters (the prologue plus chapters 1-5) which actually feels great when I write it out like that. On the other hand, I have 17 chapters written so far, which means I'm only about a third of the way through the editing process, and then only on the first 1/3- to 1/2 of the novel. I need to get a move on. My goal for this week is to get through chapter 6 (a long one) for certain, and I'd love to get through chapter 7 as well. If I could get on into chapter 8, boy, I'd be on top of the world. But I'll settle for 6 & 7. At the rate I've been going, honestly, getting all the way through 6 would be a massive improvement.

So that's where we stand. I haven't written anything new for the book since I finished the prologue back in November, but I've made extensive revisions to all the early chapters and I'm really, really happy with where they are now. I'm very anxious to get on to chapter 17 and beyond, and I've been thinking hard about how to make the story progress once I'm ready to write the rest of the book. Stay tuned for more!

Attn: Business Owners. You Suck at Facebook

2011-01-24T06:00:00.007-05:00

So you've decided you want to promote your business through the magic of social networking. You want to communicate with your customers, share information about your business, and possibly generate revenue by leveraging the friends of your existing customers. That's all well and good, but don't screw it up! For the purposes of this article, I'm going to deal with Facebook because it's far and away the most popular, successful social networking site.

There are a handful of different types of "pages" on Facebook. Choose the wrong one, and you minimize your potential business impact, miss out on useful tools for tracking activity, and even potentially frustrate your customers. Like me.

"Personal" pages - these are sort of the basic Facebook pages. They're intended for real, live, regular people. Not businesses, not celebrities, not associations, not schools, just PEOPLE. DO NOT use this sort of page for your business. I'll discuss why below.

"Group" pages - luckily you can no longer create these, but the old ones still linger. They suck. They were intended for clubs, associations, and other, well, groups who needed a dedicated gathering place online and wanted to control who was able to join. Group pages could be "open," allowing anyone to join, or "closed," where you needed permission to join. DO NOT use this sort of page for your business. Again, I'll explain below.

Here's a picture of what you actually see these days when you click the "create new page" link in Facebook:

"Community" pages - these are sort of the replacement for groups, I think. Sort of. Anyway, they're intended for groups of people who share some common interest, from organizations to charitable causes to political activism. They're not intended for businesses. DO NOT use this sort of page for your business.

An "Official Page" - ah-ha, now we're getting somewhere. These used to be called "fan" pages, because you would click the "fan" button to indicate that you liked the page. You can choose from the list you see above, because Official Pages are meant for businesses (like yours), products, organizations (from sports teams to political parties), and celebrities. THIS is the sort of page to use! Why? Read on!

Personal pages are meant to be used by people, so a lot of the information fields don't really apply to businesses. Plus, networking with a "person" in Facebook is a two-way street. Somebody who wants to network with you must "request" that you become their friend, and you must then accept them. Then you show up on their "friends" list and you are in all other ways treated as a "person" in Facebook. It's incredibly awkward, and may be a turn-off for some potential customers. They don't necessarily want you on their friends list, they just want to see when you're having a sale or a special. Another factor - and I believe it applies to both "Personal" and "Group" pages - is that there's a limit of 5000 "friends" for each type. There's no limit for "Official" business pages - you can have 10,000 people "like" your business. Why limit yourself if you don't have to? Sure, 5000 seems like a lot when you have 0, but by the time you're at 4,999, it'll be way too late to say, "Gee, I wish I'd used a different kind of Facebook page for my business."

Worse, a "Person" page can really only be interacted with by other facebook members. If you want people who might not have joined Facebook (yet) to be able to see your page, they won't.

I'm going to skip over "Group" pages because you cannot create them anymore. If you already have a "Group" page, read on to see the merits of an "Official" page and it should quickly become clear why you're in the wrong place. I'm going to skip "community" pages, too. They're just not the right place for your business because it's not what they were made for. Now, on to "Business" pages.

A properly-configured "Official Business" page on Facebook can be a good marketing tool for you. I actually know of some folks who are convinced that Facebook pages are the be-all, end-all of marketing, supplanting everything businesses have learned about marketing best-practices over the last fifty (or a hundred or a thousand) years. I'm not quite on board with that yet, but there are definitely some strong benefits to be had if you're using a Facebook page to market your business. For instance:

As I noted before, "Official Business" pages don't require you to log in to see what's on their wall. Anybody can come visit your page. AND, Business pages have built-in tools, native to Facebook, that let you monitor traffic to see how many visitors you've had, how active the page was, and other useful information. You DO NOT get this built-in to non-Official pages.

Also, clicking the "like" button on an Official page is a piece of cake. It allows interested Facebook users to follow your messages on their own "News Feed," just like a friend, but it doesn't involve them waiting for you to "approve" them as a friend, nor do you show up on their list of friends.

Best of all, Official Business pages were designed specifically for businesses. They have all the necessary fields for you to explain what your business is all about, and doesn't have all of the goofy fields like "interests" that simply don't apply to a business. An Official Business page will make you look professional and web-savvy. It allows you to turn on various "applications" such as discussion forums, coupons and special offers, special events, and even a customized "Welcome Page." If you learn the Facebook-specific HTML (or hire somebody who knows it), you can even tie those applications or the "Start Page" into other websites or databases. You can control access to things like coupons or special offers so that they're only available once people "like" your page. Once you have 25 "likes," you can even set up a custom short-name for your Facebook page so people can find it more easily. Simply, an "Official Business" makes you look like you know what you're doing, and any other type of page makes it look like you don't. Plain and simple.

So from one Facebook user to another, please, please, business owners, get it together. Do it right. It'll make everybody's life easier and really help contribute to growing your business.

Wanted: Dead or Alive

2011-01-20T06:00:00.004-05:00

I don't think I'd have really characterized myself as a huge Bon Jovi fan back when he was big. In the age of hair bands, he was always a little more pop and I was a lot more metal, so while I didn't really mind his music, I didn't run right out and buy it, either. In fact, I can't recall whether I owned any of his albums or not. I suspect I didn't.

He did have a couple of songs I really, really liked, however. Runaway wasn't too bad, but Wanted: Dead or Alive and Blaze of Glory really worked for me, and still do to this day. I loved the Young Guns movies, and here's a little trivia: the Young Guns producers wanted to use Wanted: Dead or Alive in Young Guns II. The name certainly fits, but if you listen to the lyrics, it's actually a song complaining about life as a rock star on tour (much like Bob Seger's "Turn the Page" and several other tunes I could name), and has nothing to do with a film about wild west outlaws. I suspect Bon Jovi figured that out pretty quickly, because he offered to write a song just for the movie, instead. And thus, Blaze of Glory was born. It even has the words, "I'm a young gun" right in it, and a much more twangy, wild west feel to it. Jon even has a cameo in the film, getting shot as Billy the Kid and company bust out of town. I'm pretty sure it was his first acting role.

Anyway, fast forward twenty years or so. My wife and I have Bon Jovi's greatest hits on CD. We don't really listen to it all that much, but I got my hands on it and decided it was kid-friendly enough to put in the car. I was thoroughly sick of listening to the soundtrack to Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron for the 500th time (which isn't to say it's not a great soundtrack, because it's actually got some really excellent Bryan Adams tunes on it. But egads, we must have listened to it for what seems like a year straight) and wanted something new. The kids complained bitterly at first, as they always seem to do, but they warmed up to it to the point where they no longer want to listen to anything else.They know all the lyrics from Livin on a Prayer to Bed of Roses to Runaway (though there are definitely some lyrics they don't really understand, which is fine by me) and sing them all the way to and from karate or wherever else we may go.

As I've mentioned before, my son and I are feebly trying to learn to play the guitar. We suck, but we suck a little less than we did when we started over 18 months ago. For Christmas we got electric guitars and amps, and my loving wife bought me a book of - wait for it - Bon Jovi sheet music for the guitar. Now, granted, my first attempt at "modern" electric guitar axe-play was to try to learn Metallica's "One," but I'm no Kirk Hammet and I got bogged down pretty quickly on some of his fancy fretwork. Wanted: Dead or Alive seemed like it might be a better choice.

We've been working on it for a month, and I can honestly say we've got the intro down pretty darn well, if not necessarily at full speed. Also, we're playing on six-strings rather than a twelve-string, so it sounds a bit different. I'm pretty proud of what we've learned so far. Last week we started on the body of the song, with some help from our guitar teacher. It's going to take us quite a while to learn the song, but listening to it, it sounds like lots of pieces repeat, so there should be a point sometime kind of soon where we're not learning new parts so much as trying to tie them together. There's a solo that'll take some doing, I'm sure. As much as I'm no Kirk Hammet, I'm also no Ritchie Sambora. We're having a blast, though, as I walk these streets, a loaded six-string on my back.

My Broken Stuff

2011-01-19T06:00:00.002-05:00

This article will sound a bit like whining... well, because I suppose it is to an extent. But really I've just been marveling lately at how much of my stuff is broken currently, has been broken recently, or is likely to break in the very near future. I have some thoughts on the subject, and then I'll tie it in to my writing so that perhaps somebody other than me will find this all of interest. Or not - nobody makes you read this, right?

So let's see:

My minivan was in the shop for 9 days to get a head gasket replaced, after a week or two of intermittent warning lights and suggestions that something was very wrong. Also, the gas gauge doesn't work reliably. After I got it back, it stalled on me twice the following day, requiring that I take it back in for another visit. A week later, it failed to start while my wife was running errands. That turned out to be a separate issue with the starter. I'm pretty well sick of this van and am thinking strongly of selling it, trading it in, or otherwise making it go away. It's about eleven years old, with 90,000 miles on it, which isn't really what I'd consider "a good run," but it's not really a lemon, either.

My car has an intermittent "coolant level low" light that comes on briefly. This is similar to what I saw happening with the minivan, and if it's the same problem it would mean another lengthy, costly repair on this vehicle as well.

My watch isn't a Rolex, but it's not a $12 Timex, either. When I moved from "worker bee" into management, and was regularly meeting with upper-level managers and executives, I decided I ought to try to look the part a little more. To that end, I dumped my digital Timex for a nice, solid, silvery metal analog watch that ran me about $100. It looks very nice and worked fairly well for about seven years. Then the watch band started to lose its ability to stay fastened. At first it would pop open a couple times a day at inconvenient times, but three years later it is now held closed with a twist tie. Good thing I don't meet with executives much anymore, I suppose. That was bad enough, but last week it simply stopped altogether. It might be the battery or something more significant, but I consider it broken because I'm not sure I want to replace the battery on a watch that won't stay on my wrist anyway.

My snowblower was tuned up and repaired last year and worked just fine through the 2-week "blizzard of 2010" in December. Then I didn't need it for a bit, and when I finally did need it in early January, it would start and then immediately quit on me. It's currently back in the shop. The fact that they obviously didn't fix it very well the last time probably won't matter to anybody but me.

My home furnace is working fine at the moment. It's just over two years old. In those two years, however, it has failed completely... twice. The same part - the impeller? inducer? something like that - failed on it both times, something that the repair techs insisted was virtually unheard-of. I'm hoping that I've seen that last of that problem, but I wouldn't say I have complete faith in my furnace at this point.

My hot water heater sometimes produces copious amounts of nice hot water like it's supposed to. Sometimes it produces moderate amounts of warm water. Sometimes it produces a half-assed amount of slightly-warmer-than-tap water. I've had some suggestions about how to fix it, but I think it's just a piece of crap and I look forward to when it stops working completely so I can replace the piece of junk.

The windows in my home were the rock-bottom cheapest the builder could find, I believe. They're utter garbage. They're very inefficient. Several of them are all fogged up between the layers of glass, and that's AFTER we replaced five or six of them for the same problem back when we bought the house. We need a complete window replacement, but doing that costs anywhere from thousands to many thousands of dollars, so we keep putting it off.

My 55" rear-projection TV is a massive beast of entertainment pleasure. It has a circuitboard in its guts that has failed twice so far. The TV is over twelve years old, so I figure it's only a matter of time until it craps out entirely.

Last year, the wire rack in my closet that serves as both the rod to hang clothes from and as a shelf to store stuff completely collapsed. We decided to replace it with a fiberboard in-closet organizer that was supposed to be a relatively quick "do it yourself" job. It's been sitting half-complete for over six months now, because I hit a snag. I decided I couldn't finish it without help and my wife and I don't seem to give enough of a crap to make it a priority.

My main computer died on me a few weeks ago. It got a new hard drive and some RAM and it's back up and running, but being without it for a week was a royal pain. My wife's PC occasionally flips out and my kids' PC is ancient, so I figure it's only a matter of time until one of those bites it.

So that's everything that comes to mind with a quick mental survey. Ten items, at the moment, that are failing, have failed, or are expected to fail soon. Is it any wonder I often feel as if everything I own is broken?

It's not necessarily directly related to these particular items, but the role of technology in everyday life is a theme in nearly every novel or story I'm currently working on.

My current novel is post-apocalyptic, where the means to make technological items (anything involving advanced manufacturing or a global supply chain) is gone. That's not even the main problem of the story, but it's certainly a major factor in their lives. Their society can't support big cities, for instance - there's no means to grow all that food and get it in to the residents, and no economy to support classes of merchants and craftsmen. The world has returned to the pre-industrial age of steam, where technology is limited mostly to what can be made by hand from iron, leather, or wood. Some remnants of the industrialized age remain, but they're finite resources, subject to wear and deterioration and loss, and then gone forever. I've enjoyed building a society that has to deal with these technological challenges even as they strive against the main threats of the story.

My first novel - by which I mean the one I started first and then sort of abandoned - was even more extreme. The main characters were dumped in a world with no access to technology at all - not even information on how to create technology. They had only the clothes and minimal supplies they carried (none of which were intended for long-term survival) and the knowledge in their heads. And, being modern, information-age Americans, that knowledge was extremely limited in terms of really useful, practical information about things like growing food (or just finding food), hunting, and crafting. I mean, sure, there definitely ARE people around who know this stuff - from hunters to farmers to Eagle Scouts to hobbyists with an interest in things like leatherworking or metalsmithing. But they're not entirely commonplace, and we've done a pretty good job of raising one or two generations of Americans who just don't know this stuff at all. From inner-city kids (and later adults) to middle-class and upper-class Americans who live in a world of cell-phones and iPads and on-demand service providers for their every need, the ability to live without assistance from a wide array of experts and technical assistants is severely limited.

Another story I have in mind takes the notion a bit farther. What happens as we continue to advance technologically, to the point where we're even MORE used to technology being an ever-present, reliable part of every moment of our lives. What happens, then, if you lose your access to that technology, or it turns against you? How much farther will humans progress away from their roots - their comfort with basic tools, with nature itself? And what do they give up in exchange for the comforts, the ease of advanced technology? Their independence? Their humanity? Their souls?

I enjoy exploring those themes in my work, and I think about them often. Every time a piece of my technology - technology that I'm increasingly incapable of living without or understanding enough to fix myself - fails. In fact, it's one of the only things I enjoy about this damn technology, but then I'm not exactly planning to give it up, am I?

Verizon In-Home Agent

2011-01-18T06:00:00.000-05:00

I'm still a little ambivalent about Verizon's FIOS service, to be honest. I was really used to Time-Warner Cable and felt like I knew and understood the ways in which I was being served and screwed by them. With FIOS, I feel like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop.

We decided to go with phone, internet and television as a bundle because that made the savings add up enough to justify making a switch. I will say that initial installation was excellent, with a tech coming and giving white-glove service to ensure everything was set up just the way I wanted it. On the other hand, the sales guy and a customer service rep I had to speak with on the phone both made a mess of things. The sales guy gave away all kinds of stuff he apparently wasn't supposed to. It ended up benefiting me in the end, but it literally took me 8-10 hours on the phone over several days to straighten out my bill. The sales guy might have promised me the moon, but Verizon's systems weren't even capable of giving me some of what he'd put on the contract. Likewise, the service rep I'd spoken with had offered me several discounts and free services that were supposed to be either/or choices, so I'd ended up getting billed for stuff I hadn't really wanted and had believed I was getting for free. That was a year ago.

Since then, well, it still sort of feels like my bill's higher than it should be, but it's low enough that I'm better off than if I'd stayed with cable and a traditional landline. With my parents down south for the winter, the long-distance charges alone were killing us under the old AT&T-based phone service, so FIOS's free long-distance makes a big difference.

There's one thing about FIOS that I can say I unwaveringly adore, however. The FIOS In-Home Agent. It's a piece of software that you install on your home PC and it ties into your account to let you survey, diagnose and troubleshoot your system. It's a terrific piece of software, and several times when I've used it, I've been left thinking that everything ought to be this easy.

I'll give you a terrific example. When I recently had to rebuild my PC from a bare hard-disk, it meant re-loading Microsoft Outlook. For some reason, Outlook doesn't save any of your account information in your mailfile. I could probably back up the settings info somewhere, but it's never occurred to me to figure out where. It shouldn't be a big deal - I know most of the setting info by heart. But FIOS has some unique settings and somehow used Yahoo to handle their email. Worse, when I looked up the settings on their site and plugged them into Outlook, they flat out failed to work. I triple- and quadruple-checked the settings, but I'd entered everything precisely according to what was on their page.

So I fired up the In-Home Agent, just to see if somehow it could help. And, lo and behold, it had a button that basically said "fix outlook." So I clicked it. And it did. It was literally that easy. I'd farted around with Outlook for an hour or so and the Agent fixed it in no time. When I went back to see what it had done, it turns out the FIOS website I'd been using was full of crap - because of the Yahoo email involvement, the server settings needed to be totally different from the ones that site had told me to use. It probably wasn't even a huge code-writing project to make the software do what it did - figure out who I was, determine how I got my email, determine the version of Outlook I was using, find the place where the server info was stored (presumably either in a file somewhere on my PC or in the Windows Registry) and then edit that file to input the correct settings. But all too often, what should be easy just doesn't work or isn't done. Software should always be this easy, particularly after we've had the last 30+ years to get good at it. All too often, it just isn't.

It reminded me, though, of the MONY Desktop Commander. THAT was a brilliant piece of software, if I say so myself. It's certainly the pinnacle of any software I've ever written, even if my cohort Scott Scheuerman did most of the heavy lifting in the programming department. We were working in MONY's "Integration Test Lab," and one of our major projects ended up being to help the desktop group come up with a way to get 15-20 pieces of software and software updates installed more easily on the 5,000 insurance agents' computers. They were, by and large, pretty computer-inept, but to do their jobs they needed over a gig of programs installed a couple of times a year. We'd spent many months developing massive documents about how to install the programs - step-by-step-by-step, with screenshots and captions and whatever else we could think of to idiot-proof the process, but it was a nightmare. They routinely botched the process and the result was lost productivity for the agents and lots of calls into the MONY computer helpdesk.

So we automated it. We created a whole series of batch files and subroutines to install the various programs with little or no user intervention, and even gave them a menu so they could pic and choose which programs to install. It was absolutely beautiful. It worked wonderfully once we got the bugs ironed out, and it ended up making a lot of peoples' lives easier. That was over ten years ago, and I almost feel as if the Verizon In-Home Agent is the first utility program I've found since that really went the extra mile to work as effectively and as seamlessly as it possibly could. Kudos to Verizon, too. Scott and I had to fight and claw and cajole our co-workers into supporting the software we'd developed, at least until they saw it in action. Some guys at Verizon probably had to do the same to convince the powers-that-be that they could write a utility that would really do the job for their customers. But they did, and I'm suitably impressed.

Day for a King

2011-01-17T06:00:00.001-05:00

It's Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day here in the U.S. - one of those holidays that everybody pretty much ignores unless they're the government or a public school or a bank, but that means my wife and kids are home for the day. So I'm taking the day off, too. Check back tomorrow for my take on Verizon FIOS and their nifty little In-Home Agent utility.

Don't Blame Me

2011-01-13T15:15:00.000-05:00

If you checked the blog sometime Thursday and the new Executive Decisions Part 4 wasn't up yet, it's not my fault. Blogger loves to mess with me, and often doesn't actually publish a finished blog after I click "publish," which was what happened today. Totally not my fault.

Executive Decisions part 4

2011-01-13T06:00:00.005-05:00

And it all boils down to this: creating a strategic business plan. An action plan. A detailed roadmap to business success, populated with specific work to be done by named people by a certain date.

To get there, we've defined the nature of the company and its products. We've brainstormed what the company's future ought to look like. We've boiled that future vision down into the most important work that needs to get done. Perhaps we've also detailed the gap between where you are and where you'd like to be. Possibly you've taken the time to imagine everything that could go wrong and develop ways to prevent those obstacles or get the business back on track if they do happen. If so - awesome! All of that information can and must funnel into your plan.

The Strategic Timeline - your business plan needs to account for specific activities over the next twelve months. It should detail any and all of the following:

Marketing and Ad Campaigns
Projects
Goals
Priorities
Any other known time-commitments or planned work-effort beyond daily "must-do" work*
Key dates - holidays, fiscal closes (especially if they impact the ability to do other work or projects), etc.

*A note about "keep the lights on" work. There MUST be a balance between the priority get-ahead work and the daily grind. Most people would prefer to put the bulk of their effort into growing the business - it can be exciting and it feels like you're really accomplishing something when you're working on it. But, by and large, the business stays in business because there are people at their desks doing the daily work to keep the customers happy. This is critical - I can personally attest to how frustrating it is when senior managers don't recognize how much of the work day is being spent on necessary, if boring, work. You don't want to put "spend 2 hours handling customer emails" on your Strategic Timeline, but if that work is critical to your business, don't you dare forget about it, either. It's a sure recipe for driving your staff crazy if you pretend they can spend 40 hours a week working on the exciting growth stuff and somehow the day-to-day work will just magically get done.

Once you've gathered all of that information, it's time to lay it out in order and plug it into your timeline. Watch in particular for places where you've got too much going on to realistically handle. Once the whole year is planned out, you're done - and your real work has just begun. It's time to get going on that plan. Bang out your goals and projects relentlessly, one after the next after the next until the year is over and they're all finished. Focus on your priorities and shove aside anything that's not a priority which threatens to drag you off course. If you made a Risk Mitigation plan, refer to it often and use it to avoid trouble. But most importantly, POST the PLAN. Make sure it's right there where you and your key staff will see it on a regular - preferably daily - basis. At your weekly staff meeting (you DO have a weekly staff meeting, right?), point to your Strategic Timeline and verify that you're still on track. Be flexible, of course - if you missed something big or circumstances changed, make adjustments to the plan so it's still realistic and actionable. But don't let up. Don't give up. Don't let the old ways, the easy ways, the chaos, pull you back in. Make your Strategic Plan your battle flag - let it lead your charge to more and greater successes. Let it influence every Executive Decision you make. It's your recipe for success - follow and cherish it.

Executive Decisions part 3

2011-01-12T06:00:00.003-05:00

Welcome back to my primer on business fundamentals. Let's get back to work.

As I said yesterday, the next steps in the process help you focus your attention in the areas you and your workshop participants decide are the most important. You want to identify your priorities and goals based on the 12-month visualization, so you know what to give your limited resources to and exactly who's doing what.

3. Priorities and Goals - your 12-month visualization cooked up a whole slate of work to do. Maybe you can get it all done and maybe you can't, but some of that work is going to be more important - more beneficial to your business - than others. It's also vital that you put some scope around your key objectives so you any anyone else affected by them know exactly what they mean. So a key step in building your strategic business plan for the next year is to distill your visualization's most critical components down into priorities and goals. Which probably makes you wonder, what's the difference? Read on and see!

Priorities - you can have more priorities than goals, and probably will. A priority is simply something you've identified that you consider more vital to your business success than other work you could be doing. When it comes down to a decision about what to work on, you should always pick the priority over the non-priority. It's pretty much that simple. Identify your top priorities at any given time period so you can balance your work-balance and stay on track.

Goals - these take a bit more work, and there will generally be fewer of them. Not everything you plan to do in the coming year will be suitable to turn into a goal, which is why you'll want to identify priorities as well. But for those tasks that you designate as goals, they should be the heaviest-hitters. They should be the tasks that, if accomplished, will have the biggest impact on your business. And it's vital that they're well-written in order to be truly effective. Each goal should be S.M.A.R.T. I've written about this before, but the Cliff's Notes version is to make each goal Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time-bound. You must know exactly what meeting the goal (or failing to meet it) will look like, and there has to be some tool for identifying success. The goal has to be something you can actually accomplish given the realities of your business, and, perhaps most importantly of all, you need to set a timeframe by which the goal must be met.

Break your year down into the priorities and goals you're going to work on each month, each quarter, and before you know it, there's a gameplan in front of you for driving business success!

Now, as mentioned yesterday, there are lots of other exercises you could use during a strategic planning workshop. Two tools that fit especially well in this part of the workshop would be a gap analysis and a risk mitigation matrix. Before we get on to creating our full strategic plan, let's talk about those.

Gap Analysis - this is a neat and useful exercise and fits really well with any of your Visualizations. The idea is to identify two key points in time for your business: the "current state" and the "desired future state" (which can be at any point in the future). It's important that the two states be broken down across similar categories, because the meat of the exercise is to define the distance between where you are now (the current state) and where you want to be (the desired future state) in as specific terms as possible. The outcome is to end up with a whole series of "this is specifically what we'd need to do to get where we want to be" items that you can then turn into priorities or goals or, if they're completely unrealistic, can decide to abandon completely.

That last is critical - unrealistic is unrealistic no matter how bad you may want it. Step up to the plate and make the executive decision, the tough call, right now. "We're not going to waste precious money or time on trying to achieve that, because it's not feasible given our current situation. Let's focus on those places where we're truly able to win, succeed, and grow." That's a much better speech to make to your team than one about how you blew all your company's ready cash chasing rainbows and are no longer a viable company.

Risk Mitigation Matrix - this is an excellent tool for all sorts of business scenarios, most notably projects. The idea is to try to identify every risk you and your team can think of - every obstacle that could get in the way of meeting your goals. List them. Next, draw columns beside the list and label them "likelihood" and "impact". Go down the list, and rate each item in those two categories. For each possible risk, how likely is it that the obstacle will actually occur? Rate it. For each possible risk, how big a deal would it be if it did occur? Rate it. I prefer to use a rating system of LOW/MEDIUM/HIGH. When you're finished, you'll have a matrix of risks, their chances of occurring, and their significance to the company if they do occur.

Next, select those risks that are HIGH in both categories. In other words, they are VERY likely to occur, and they will have a BIG impact if they do. Develop mitigation strategies for each - plans that you can either implement in advance to prevent the risk from occurring, or that you could implement after the fact to lessen the damage when it does. When you've developed plans for all of your heavy-hitters, go back down the list and do the same for the next two categories - those with HIGH in one column, and MEDIUM in the other. Ignore anything with LOW in both categories, and don't spend a lot of time on items with HIGH or MEDIUM likelihood but LOW impact. Sure, they're going to happen, but who really cares if they don't do any real harm to your business? When you're done, you should have a whole list of new priorities (the results of plans that need to be enacted NOW to prevent obstacles from getting in the way later) and an emergency preparedness plan to be implemented when and if certain risks occur that you weren't able to prevent. That's a pretty handy document to have, and you'll really appreciate it when all hell's breaking lose and you know you've got all the tools you need to deal with it and limit damage to your bottom line.

Tomorrow, the final wrap-up: creating a business plan for the next year. It'll be short and sweet, but oh so satisfying when you're watching your business grow as the result of your careful attention to these details.

Hey, look at that!

2011-01-11T11:11:00.001-05:00

It's 11:11 AM on 1/11/11. That's pretty numberalogical or whatever.

Executive Decisions part 2

2011-01-11T06:00:00.003-05:00

Welcome to part two of my brief review of techniques I've learned over the years for driving business improvements. These tools are typically used in a workshop setting with key stakeholders in the business or business sub-area to develop a detailed, usable strategic business plan.

Which reminds me of a saying one of my bosses and business mentors used to have. Whenever we brought large groups of people together, he would remind everyone that "this is a very expensive meeting" and that we needed to make sure that it added real value to the business. Otherwise, it was a waste of money. Please consider this when you're setting up your strategic planning session - if it's just a bunch of busy-work, you're wasting the hourly rate of every participant times the number of hours you spend in the workshop times the number of participants. That could EASILY add up to thousands of dollars of YOUR business's money. Make it count or spend it elsewhere!

Now, back to the workshop agenda!Yesterday we covered part 1 of the (usually multi-day workshop), Definition of your company and all of its key elements. In other words, you defined what your company ALREADY IS or SHOULD BE. In today's section, we delve into determining what your company WILL BE.

2. Visualization - the next step is to look out into the future and put serious thought into where the business is and ought to be headed. I usually take a three-step approach. I suggest tackling a far-future visualization, usually five-to-ten years. I also recommend a short-term visualization of one year, because that's really the meat of your strategic plan - what to do in the coming calendar or fiscal year. In-between, I like to tailor the medium-term visualization to the needs of the workshop and the business, however 18-months is pretty typical. Here's how they work:

Five Year Visualization: imagine how you want your business to look in five to ten years, assuming a realistic best-case scenario. It can be somewhat vague, but the more specific you can make it, the more useful a tool it will be. The idea is to identify general directions, key successes you'd need to have made, and any major changes you foresee in the business. An ideal five-year visualization should include planned staffing changes, major projects, significant product changes, any anticipated shifts in marketplace, any new facilities (including moving, expanding or renovating existing offices), and certainly anything really significant like sales or IPOs. It's okay for your five-year to be a bit on the rosey side as long as you feel that your company's future is or could be legitimately rosey. Ultimately, you're going to create a series of five 12-month plans that should get you in the ballpark of your five-year visualization if all goes well. Even if all doesn't go well, you've got something to shoot for, which is better than just flailing around. Besides, you'll be updating your five-year visualization each year, so it's always going to be a future outlook, never a near-term realization.

12-Month Visualization: this is the real, practical, meat-and-potatoes exercise. What do you want/need/plan to get done THIS YEAR? It needs to be extremely specific, actionable, and realistic. You may not actually accomplish it all, but it should encompass everything you really should try to do. Start with a brainstorming exercise and then distill that down to your actual list of activities for the coming year. That will in turn inform your goals and priorities, but we'll get to those later. The 12-month visualization should, on the one hand, bring you 20% of the way to your five-year outlook. And, on the other hand, it should absolutely form the foundation of a strategic operating plan for the coming four quarters. Plan to spend a fair chunk of time nailing this down, especially if you've never done this exercise before. Each subsequent year, as you get better at planning and build on what you did the year before, the workshop will get more efficient.

18-Month Visualization: again, this can actually be tailored to whatever timeframe works best for you, but the intention is two-fold. First, it should be an outgrowth of your 12-month Visualization that extends the timeline and shows that the work you're doing in the coming year doesn't end when that year is done. The 18-month visualization is all about continuity and momentum, documenting your team's expectations for life beyond the coming year. The other function is for it to serve as a further stepping-stone toward the five-year outlook. Sort of a "second shot" at nailing down the key accomplishments that need to occur to achieve the long-term vision you have for your business. For me, the core of the 18-month visualization is as follows: "Assume that you've executed a detailed strategic plan over the course of the coming year and have been largely successful at achieving your 12-month vision. What projects will still be underway at the end of the year, and what specific further changes do you need to make in the following six months to continue to build momentum and grow the business?"

When those three sections are complete, you should really be able to see what needs to happen right away and what you expect to happen in the future to move your company toward your ideal state. Now, bear in mind that there are lots of tools you can incorporate into this workshop that I'm not covering - everything from detailed budgetary and financial analysis to team-building exercises and so forth. That doesn't mean they have no value, rather that this is meant to be an overview, not a comprehensive manual. Two tools that fit especially well in this part of the workshop would be a gap analysis and a risk mitigation matrix. I'll try to remember to come back to those at some point, but you can google them if you want to skip ahead. If I ever write a book on this subject, I'll include them for sure.

The next steps in the process help you focus your attention in the areas you and your workshop participants decide are the most important. You want to identify your priorities and goals based on the 12-month visualization, so you know what to give your limited resources to and exactly who's doing what. We'll cover those tomorrow.

Executive Decisions part 1

2011-01-10T06:00:00.003-05:00

I've been really lucky as a businessman. I've had some incredibly (albeit not exclusively) positive experiences and learned a tremendous amount about how businesses run, what to do, what not to do, and what to do RIGHT NOW to be successful. Not even counting the amazing people I've been fortunate enough to work with, the knowledge I've gained about operating a company, small or large, is invaluable. It's easy for me sometimes to lose sight of that as I've transitioned out of the day-to-day business world and given how easy it is to focus on the things that stressed me out, pissed me off, and generally made "the office" a torturous, painful place to be. But it wasn't all bad, and there were definitely aspects of business that I loved and still enjoy.

One of my favorite things, being something of a Type-A personality and a bit of a show-off, was to be the expert who could swoop into a broken, troubled, or inefficient situation and put things back on track. Man I enjoyed that. Being the superhero with the creativity, experience and know-how to make peoples' lives better, help them overcome adversity and drive substantial business improvements was one of the greatest feelings in the world for me. I got to be that guy a few times and I loved it. Heck, just being an IT support guy, which was how I got my start, sometimes put me in that position multiple times a day. But I'm really referring to the work I did as an executive, when I was able to roll up my sleeves, climb into the guts of the business, and work with interdisciplinary teams to drive meaningful business change.

I got a reminder of that last week. Some friends of mine are operating a small service business, and after six months of operation they've had some pretty meaningful success. But it was pretty clear to them that they weren't optimized for success. They had "plans," but not "a plan." They worked, but they didn't really get work done. They were operating on pure tactics, without an overriding strategy to tie their daily and weekly activities into long-term business growth. So I sat down with them and we talked, and the more I talked and thought and advised, the more I remembered about the achievements and experiences I'd enjoyed in business. I thought this would be a good place to share some of the take-aways from our discussions.

1. Definition - the first step toward a meaningful, useful business plan is to decide who and what your company is, and what it is not. Knowing your product, your target market, and your definition of success is key to knowing whether any subsequent decisions you make are appropriate. You're less likely to find yourself running off in fifteen different directions or chasing radically disparate (or even mutually-exclusive) markets if you've defined in detail what your business is all about. I suggested breaking this into concepts such as a mission statement, a set of core values, a set of core competencies, and a set of key differentiators.

Bear in mind, these are all utterly useless unless they're used to inform what comes after. I remember I always used to hate working on mission statements, because they were always fretted and argued over ad nauseum and then immediately forgotten. What a waste of time. But draft a meaningful business statement that drives directly into your operations, strategy, and marketing plans, and now you've got something.

Mission Statement - this is a short one- or two-sentence description of your business's reason for being. It can encompass concepts like the nature of your product(s), the make-up of your customers, the distribution of your profits, or even your preferred working environment. If it's written carefully and honestly, it should be influential in every aspect of your business. If it's just going to be lipservice, don't bother. Better yet, can the whole company and go do something you feel is worth your time.

Core Values - these are the ideals your company wants to espouse. They'll keep you focused and honest when met with temptation to "do the wrong thing." Any company that's not trying to be deliberately evil should have a set of these and focus on them constantly. It's extremely easy to get lulled or tempted into making life miserable for other people in the pursuit of profit. If that's not your preferred way of operating, set some ground rules up front. And, frankly, if it is your way of operating, you would probably still benefit from stating your core values to remind you to rape and pillage at every opportunity. I'd just prefer you didn't.

Core Competencies - these are the game-changing skills, knowledge, talents and expertise that you plan to leverage to succeed. It might be anything from technical know-how to salesmanship to leading-edge product design. Your core competency might be to spot and capitalize on trends or to have the most efficient supply-chain in order to drive down costs. Whatever it is you bring to the table, get it out on the table so you never forget to utilize it, nurture it, and value it. And if it ever becomes obsolete, fix it or replace it. Bottom line - everything you plan to be good at as a company goes here, and then informs your priorities later on.

Key Differentiators - there are two categories of differentiators - positive and negative. Hopefully your list of positive differentiators is much, much longer. This category should encompass all the things that make your company unique or different from competitors and alternatives. The positive differentiators are the "good news" - and should be accentuated wherever possible, whether by actively developing them further, making them the centerpiece of your marketing, or factoring them into your strategic thinking. Your negative differentiators are the "bad news" - those aspects of your business where you're weak, where your competitors are legitimately better than you, or where you've got perception issues that limit your ability to succeed.

Once you know these four things about your business, you've gone a long way toward understanding who and what you're all about. Now get it up on the wall of your office somewhere and look at it often. These are your guiding principles and the key work is "guiding." Whenever you consider a major executive decision, check and see whether it fits with those principles. If it doesn't, think really, really hard before you do it.

Next step - visualization!

Status

2011-01-05T06:00:00.000-05:00

Sorry, no update today. I'm in the process of completely reloading my PC after the DELL repair guy replaced the hard-disk yesterday, and it's a very labor-intensive process. I MIGHT have a post up on Thursday, but I'd say the chances are 50/50 at best.

Are We Ageless?

2011-01-04T06:00:00.001-05:00

Since the late 1800s, we've been able to characterize each time-period as an "age." It all started with the Age of Steam, followed by the Industrial Age. Well, technically it didn't "start" there, of course - we had the Age of Enlightenment, the Age of Sail, the Age of Exploration, and - if you want to go back far enough - the Iron Age, the Bronze Age and the Stone Age. But most of those time periods covered huge swaths of time, from multiple generations to centuries. Beginning around the Age of Steam, things started to compress and speed up. Change came much more quickly, such that a person could see the differences between their youth and their old age.

That was fairly unique to human history - for most of the time man has walked the Earth, technologies have come slowly and have spread throughout humanity's civilizations in a laborious process of trade and conquest. Men and women lived and died using the same tools and techniques their parents and grandparents had used up until about the 1800s. And once the concept of factory-based manufacturing really took off, once steam and electricity were available to unburden men of the physical forces needed to shape and mold their products, things really started to fly.

So we had the Industrial Revolution, followed by the electrical and gas era of the 1910s through the early 1940s - the Age of Invention, if you will, when commerce and war drove incredible advances in science, technology, medication, transportation, aviation, and virtually every aspect of the average person's life was touched by it. And it all came together in what might have been the ultimate invention, in which man harnessed the power of the sun itself - the atomic bomb. Welcome, people of 1945, to the Atomic Age.

The Atomic Age was a cool and frightening time, especially for Americans. On the one had, the late 40s and 50s were a time of unparalleled growth and prosperity, with new gadgets available seemingly every day and with lots of disposable income to buy them with. The trade-off was the start of the Cold War and the neverending fear of nuclear annihilation that would last right up through the early 1980s.

The Atomic Age drove right on into the Space Age of the 1960s and 1970s. This may have been the first era where the "age" was recognized by all to the point where it was actually used in advertising. This was what got me thinking along these lines in the first place, but I'll come back to that. So we had the "Space Age" - the time when men floated in space and walked on the moon for the first time in human history (and the last, as it turns out. The ratings just weren't high enough to continue the reality show called "Men on the Moon" and it was canceled after just a few episodes in the 1970s). We had "space-age polymers" and "space-age materials" available for sale on television, and we all knew exactly what a great time we were living in. Unless you happened to get drafted and have to go to Viet Nam, of course. But I'm sure there were some space-age polymers in your rifle, so that's something.

The Space Age overlapped the Digital Age of the late 70s and the 80s, when computers began to make headway at the corporate and academic levels. You pretty much needed a Mainframe computer to get anything done, because the technology was too expensive and too tempermental for home use. I mean, sure you could build yourself an Apple computer from a kit out of plywood and soldered connections, but it didn't really do much. You could buy a TRS-80 from Radio Shack in the late 70s, but you had to fart around loading every program, individually, into memory from a cassette tape. It was slow and tedious and, well, it still didn't do much when you were done. But it was digital! And it heralded a new age still to come.

By the 1990s, computers were invading homes and businesses around the country, because they'd become small and fast enough to be useful. Plus, the Internet had caught up, connecting those computers together and giving them something to do. That something mostly turned out to be a never-ending quest for pornography, but when people got satiated on that, it turns out they could also go shopping and play games and stuff. The Information Age had arrived!

And to my knowledge, that was the last named age. I'm not sure whether anybody's figured out yet whether it's still going on or whether it's ended. I was thinking about this the other day, as it occurred to me that you no longer hear advertisements predicated on our age, as you did with "space-age" materials back in the 70s and into the 80s. For the last few generations, we've taken great pride in our techological growth and our succession of ages, but now there seems to be a bit of ennui about it. I'm not sure if we've lost track, or if things are just progressing so quickly that we can no longer tell where one begins and the next ends. You might argue that the ages are easier to see looking back, but that didn't stop us during the Atomic Age, the Space Age, the Digital Age or the Information Age. We all knew we were in them as they were happening.

So what are the 2010s to be? I could buy that the Information Age is still ongoing, but it doesn't really feel like it. I feel like the bulk of that was the emergence of the Internet, home computers, laptops, PDAs, and smartphones. Those have all been done to death - they're just getting smaller, faster, and more capable. The iPad, for instance, is cool, but it's just a fancy smartphone with a big screen and the "phone" capability turned off.

So what's it to be? Is there some seminal event or product or technology that needs to be invented, that will define the next age of mankind? Has the next age already begun and we're just too close to see it? Or have we reached a point in our advancement where our technologies are so mundane and blend together so seamlessly that they're no longer worthy of note? Are we ageless?

Computer Challenges

2011-01-03T06:00:00.001-05:00

My main PC - the one I use to play games, surf the web, and write this blog - is on the fritz. It started to blue screen last week, and it got progressively worse to the point where it now blue-screens and auto-reboots within a minute or two after I power it up. DELL will be sending out a tech and some replacement parts later this week, but until that time I'm a little stuck. I can do everything (except the gaming) on my work PC - the one I use to write - but if I'm going to go downstairs and fire up that machine, I really ought to spend that time working on my book. After having the kids home for the holidays, the last two weeks have been incredibly unproductive. The other option is to use this really crappy old laptop we've got, but the comma key only works if I press it really hard and the wireless connection only works if the moon is full and the stars are properly-aligned. I can stand it for short bursts, but then I need either a comma or a web page and I get a desire to smash.

So... I can't predict how much Virtual Vellum you'll be getting this week. I've got some ideas I want to cover, including a 2010 year in review and a spoiler-ful analysis of TRON: Legacy, I'm just not sure when/how I'll get them posted. Bear with me - we'll get to them eventually.

[Movie Review] Tron Legacy

2010-12-30T06:00:00.005-05:00

This will be my relatively spoiler-free review. I plan to post a more detailed, spoiler-full analysis, probably next week. This review is at the express request of my mother.

It's no secret that I was a HUGE fan of the original Tron. I remember when it came out, playing just down the street from me at the Kalet's Genesee Theater. Those were back in the days when individual movie houses still showed first-run films. I saw it a dozen times at least. I was already quite a regular at that theater, to the point where they often didn't charge me admission. They somehow ended up with a cardboard standee from Smucker's, which was a free-standing, near-lifesize carboard TRON holding a box of promotional magazines. The magazines had little puzzles, tidbits about the film, and a fold-out poster of Tron. They apparently didn't feel they needed it (after all, why promote a movie that everyone who walked in the building was already there to see, I suppose), so they gave it to me. Sadly, I didn't keep the whole thing, but I still have one of the magazines around somewhere. I gave them away at my 11th birthday party, which was just after the film came out.

It was a totally Tron-themed party. Everybody got a free magazine. My mom made an awesome electric-blue cake of Tron. I got toy lightcycles and action figures. I'd read the novelization and explained the nuances of the film to anyone who'd listen. I really, really, loved it.

So I was very nervous about the sequel - could they really pull off the magic that the original managed to evoke, even with its sometimes ham-fisted story? Could they be true to the characters I adored, to the digital world so amazingly, tantalizingly unveiled twenty years before it would become a reality (at least in terms of online gaming). Now that computer technology had gone from futuristic to commonplace, would they be skillful enough to make it seem exciting somehow?

I'm pleased to say that the answer is mostly yes. They missed on the last point, I think - in somehow making the computer world seem magical and unfathomable. That would, I think, have simply been asking too much. It's just too interwoven into our society now to make it seem exotic in the same way that it was back when I was the only geek in a five-mile radius with a computer. Some of the wonder of the original - with the floating, binary "bit" and the tanks and seeing a recognizer for the first time, or the little things, like the small bugs that pop up out of the ground and amble away like digital spiders - just couldn't be (or wasn't, at least) recaptured in the sequel.

But if anything, the story is actually richer, fuller than the first time. Instead of being the tale of a young computer hacker seeking proof that he'd been ripped off (which was certainly understandable, but not necessarily all that noble), this is the story of that same hacker trying to create a new, perfect world within the computer network. It's a story of betrayal and of a son seeking his lost, loving father. And it's the story of a villain who, unlike in the first film, doesn't know he's a villain. Doesn't believe he's the bad guy, but thinks he's doing the right thing - doing what he was meant to do.

As a special treat, Tron: Legacy is chock-full from start to finish with references to the original. When the son walks into his father's old arcade and turns on the power, for example, Journey is cranking through the jukebox. Journey, of course, did one of the main tracks on the original soundtrack. There are little lines and visual homages to the first film everywhere, and I believe they are truly meant to speak to the fans like me.

But that's not why you should see this movie. It's genuinely entertaining. It's not Shakespeare, but then neither was Star Wars (by a longshot). But it's visually incredible to watch, including an almost Wizard-of-Oz-like transition from the 2-D world of reality to the 3-D of the Game Grid. It's got some outstanding fight-scenes (though I wished a few times that there were more of them) and some stunning digital vistas. It's got some interesting characters, most of whom don't deal quite as much as they should with their inner demons, but the Kevin Flynn character, played again by Jeff Bridges, certainly does, which is the key to the film.

One other special effect that's worth noting is that Bridges plays a triple-role in the film. He plays his Kevin Flynn character as both a young man of the post-Tron 1980s and as a much older man of 2010. But he also plays Clu, his digital doppelganger and nemesis, who looks exactly like Flynn did back in the 1980s. Yes, through the magic of technology the face of a young Bridges returns to play those roles, and it's nearly seamless (though the lips didn't seem to precisely match the sound on a couple occasions). Bridges was quoted as saying (and I'm paraphrasing out of pure laziness) that he welcomed the new technology as he wouldn't need to act anymore, he could just license his face to the filmmakers).

So you've got a story with enough depth to keep you interested to the end, some character growth as Flynn comes to understand and, ultimately, embrace both his enemy and his mistakes, some more character growth as the flighty son steps up and acts his age at last, and through it all some absolutely amazing 3D graphics that really do make you feel like you're watching a videogame from the inside.

I don't think Tron: Legacy will get the same sort of "revolutionary" historical footnotes that the original did (except possibly for the "young flynn" visual effect), but it kept me entertained for two hours that seemed like less than ninety minutes and it engaged me in a way that pulled me right back to the original, as it was meant to. It's not the perfect film (I think they could have done as well or better by leveraging the story of the Tron 2.0 video game, or parts of it, anyway), but it was pretty damn good, which is all I can ask for. I rate Tron: Legacy a strong A-, approaching an A, and I recommend it to anybody who liked the original or just wants to live on the game grid for a short time.

Speaking the Language

2010-12-29T06:00:00.000-05:00

I'm a horrible linguist. I'm pretty good at English, though not to the extent that I can quote many of the more obscure rules verbatim. I'm more of a "I know it when I see it" master of the language. I used to be better at it when I was an English teacher, but that was fifteen years ago and, honestly, spending ten of those years among businessmen (and women) who abuse the language at every opportunity pretty well squeezed from me much of my devotion to the nuances of grammar. It was that or run screaming mad. Which I more or less ended up doing anyway, so there you go.

So I'm down with English, but beyond that I'm hopeless and helpless. I took something approaching five years of French in high school, followed by another year in college, and I can neither speak, write, nor read French at even a basic level. I know a few words each in Spanish, Italian, German and Japanese, but far from enough to really communicate in any of those languages.

But with my oldest kid heading closer to middle school, I've started thinking about language. In my parents' lifetime, English was the dominant language to such an extent that unless you wanted to go visit a foreign country, you just didn't have to worry about languages. Any business or transaction you wanted to conduct from the good ol' U-S of A would be conducted in English. That's changing pretty quickly, however.

We're not a bilingual country like Canada, yet everything is increasingly going bilingual, with Spanish included on labels, coupons, phone menus, and signs. What does this say to me? Well, it suggests that a mastery of Spanish might have some real value as a citizen of the U.S. in years to come. The more Spanish is accepted and catered-to, the less incentive there is for native speakers of Spanish to learn English, and the greater the chance that an English-speaker will encounter a situation where they wish they knew Spanish. So that's a point in favor of learning Spanish.

But I'm also wary of China. Much like the US prior to World War II, I see China as the "sleeping dragon," with a bright future as THE big global powerhouse ahead of them. It's painful to admit, because America has been that global powerhouse for the last sixty years and I'd prefer not to see that end, but it's just not plausible to compete with a country that controls such a huge landmass (and corresponding wealth of natural resources, including some precious metals necessary for modern technology and available nowhere else) and such an enormous population. They're growing exponentially in power and influence, and that growth is going to overwhelm us at some point. There are likely economic scientists who could nail down exactly when that point is going to be, but I figure it's no more than 15-20 years away, and that may be grossly conservative. It might be 5-10 years away.

Look, for instance, at this article. It points out that pretty soon, there will be more web-pages in Chinese than there will be in English. And then there will be many more. And then the Internet will be in Chinese, with a small portion set aside for English and other languages. Wow. That hits pretty hard. I mean, nobody's going to force English-language websites to convert to Chinese. All things being equal, it doesn't matter whether the Internet, as a whole, is 10% Chinese and 80% English (with the remaining 10% being other languages) or if it's 10% English and 80% Chinese. We could all surf happily along in our own "language zones" and all would be hunky-dory. But all things aren't equal, and many of the pages on the Internet are put there for money. If you can make much, much more money by communicating in Chinese, you will. You might ALSO communicate the same info in English as long as it's not too big a hassle and as long as it also brings in money, but after a while you might decide it's not worth the effort to bother, because you're making 98% of your revenue off Chinese-speaking traffic.

So as a global citizen, chalk up a point for Chinese as a pretty worthwhile language to know. It's not likely that you'll need Chinese to buy groceries in my kids' lifetimes, but if you want to get ahead in business, politics, academics or a wealth of other careers, you might be very well-served to know Chinese. Because the dragons are waking up.

Guitaring It Up for 2011

2010-12-28T06:00:00.004-05:00

In June 2011, my son and I will enter our third year as guitarists-in-training. It seems to me that it's time we at least tried to sound like we'd been playing week-in and week-out, usually five days a week, for two years. We're certainly armed with the right equipment now.

This Christmas, I picked up the two cheapest electric guitars I could find (at Aldi's, of all places), and matched them with two used practice amps that I bought for around $30 each. We've also got our original acoustics, and we got some new guitar stands so they're all, uh, standing. I'm not sure I even fully understand the value of guitar stands, but they seemed like a good idea so there you go.

On top of the hardware, my wife bought me a book of Bon Jovi music, which gives me something interesting to practice. I mean, who can hear "Wanted: Dead or Alive" and NOT want to play that awesome riff? I wish the book had Blaze of Glory in it, but even so there are several songs in it that I like and look forward to trying to play.

Speaking of stuff I'm trying to play, I've got a handful of challenging tunes in the work that I'm attempting. These are above and beyond the exercises we're doing in our lessons: Don't Fear the Reaper by Blue Oyster Cult and More than a Feeling by Boston. I've decided to try to learn:

One, by Metallica. Not because it's my favorite Metallica song (there are so many to choose from and One is high on the list, but not quite my favorite) but because it felt like I actually had a shot at being able to play the lead parts on it. Kirk Hammet is a madman, though, and trying to master hammer-ons and pull-offs and such is pushing me to my limits.

Storybook Love, by Mark Knopfler. This is the main tune from The Princess Bride. I found an awesome cover of it on YouTube, by a young lady who affixed a camera to the end of her guitar with a rubber-band so I can sort of see what her fingers are doing. A good thing, too, because the guitar tabs I downloaded sounded NOTHING like the song I'm familiar with.

I was very seriously thinking about picking up the music for O Holy Night that was on sale for the holidays at Guitar Guru, but I misread the end-date for the sale and missed it, more's the pity. Guitar Guru is pretty cool - you not only get the music to print, but on your computer screen you can actually see (and hear) a graphical representation of the notes being played on a guitar. I'd like to try it out with a whole song, but they're priced from $6 to $7.25 each which is just more than I want to play, no matter how cool it all is.

The last month or so, I've been a little off my game guitar-wise. Part of the problem is that I'm just not happy with my skill-level, which falls far short both of where I'd like it to be and where I feel like it ought to be after about eighteen months. A bigger issue, though, was actually the fact that we had an electric guitar. My son and I were both super-jazzed to have it to play, but we couldn't both play it at the same time. I'd let him have it for the morning guitar practice, but that meant that I often didn't practice at all. Which, of course, didn't help much with the former problem of my not playing as well as I'd like to. Ah, well, in the grand scheme of things slacking off for a couple of weeks isn't the end of the world. I'm committed to getting back to business starting this week.

Interestingly, my daughter has again expressed an interest in learning the guitar. My daughter already plays the piano, trumpet, recorder, and tin whistle, but only when I force her to. Which is to say, she does the minimum amount of practice required, and never, ever, touches her instruments for pleasure. As such, I'm not super-motivated to invest a great deal of time trying to teach her a new instrument. Instead, I've offered to hand her the basic chord sheets from when I started, plus the exercises in learning the individual notes. Since she already reads music, I thought that would be pretty handy. If she works hard at those two types of lesson for an extended period - say, a couple of months, and still shows an interest, then I'll try to teach her more. I'm not going to hold my breath, but if she sticks with it that would be really neat and I'll help her however I can.

For my part, I just want to be able to play without feeling like I'm the underdog in a prize-fight. I want my fingers to hit the strings nice and square, without muting the strings nearby. I want to be able to play barre chords properly. I want to hit the strings because I know where they are and what they're supposed to sound like, not because I had to stop and think about it intensely. If I can manage that this year - or better, in the next several months - I'll be extremely happy.