The Most Important Voter

Unfortunately, the age of 40 is quickly approaching, less than a year away. I've had to deal with certain aging pains. Sports stars my age have been hitting retirement. I'm almost half paid off on my student loans. Four-door sedans have a certain appeal.

Sexy. And with a heated steering wheel.

And certain possibilities are starting to fall by the wayside. Being on a "40 under 40" list is becoming a remote possibility. The untold millions I expect to make (or win) will be spent on responsible things, not youthful exuberance. If I'm not on a presidential ticket this election, it will be impossible to become the youngest president.

Of course, those elections are increasingly difficult. Mostly because I am not being pandered to properly.  I am, after all, the most important voter.

Idle games and the scale of money.

To explain an idle game is to have already lost the war.

Idle games are just that, your car is running. All the time. And you get points. But it’s not your car. It’s your computer. What you hook to that computer as it idles, the sequence you attach those things, and how much patience you have to wait, all determine your success at the game. Hit on the right combination, and the numbers go exponential. Initial clicks that counted by ones, then tens, then hundreds suddenly go into the sextillions and septillions.

Really, it was 10 million years of waiting on the next upgrade.

In short, the only thing worse than explaining an idle game is actually playing one.

A book review! This is the end of days.

At the end of 2015, I finished off a novel and realized it was the fourth book that I had read in the year. This represented both a success and a failure. I didn't get through four entire books in 2014, so go me! But I probably could have done better. My count for movies was close to 50, and I polished off eight multi-season television series, about twenty seasons in total.

2016 will be different. Two full weeks into the new year, I have finished a 1300 page book. It was an ebook, but it was by Neal Stephenson, so it's listed at 880 pages in the dead tree editions. Woot! It compares interestingly to a couple other movies, so spoilers ahead.

Where we're going, we don't need books.

At least dead tree ones. They're heavy. And flammable.

The Kickstarter - Postmortem

It’s been a little over a week (okay, maybe two) since the end of the Kickstarter campaign for Dad’s Giant Family Organizing, Household Planning, and Event Scheduling Calendar. So here we go with the postmortem analysis of What Happened.

 Not the same thing. But still a pretty fun book.

Buy it and read it because I want Magary to keep me entertained with his writing.

Before that, tho, there are deep thanks to everyone who pledged to the campaign. You are awesome for putting your money where my mouth is. I would also like to appreciate all the folks who campaigned for the campaign. From hitting the share button to passing the link along to interested friends, you all helped tremendously. And somewhat unexpectedly. More on that in a second.

That said, I have a few take-aways from this campaign that I hope helps others in the future. Any sort of situation that requires raising money, from selling scout cookies to first round venture financing, is a difficult and bracing experience. This Kickstarter was quite all of these things for me. So: