Accountability

photo by Jonathan Warner

The trouble with leveraging accountability into your diet by posting lists of everything you eat on the Internet where the whole world can see it is that nobody reads those fucking things.

Improv is a (beautiful) Pyramid Scheme

Big-house improv has its detractors and I was one of them for a few years.  I, too, saw organized improv as a sort of buy-in pyramid scheme.  It certainly is pay-to-play.  And after you’re part of the system, even if you start coaching other players as I’m trying to do more and more, it seems we’re all just spending each other’s money.  You pay hundreds, thousands of dollars to teachers and administrators who end up becoming coworkers and friends.  My expenses have supported the drinking habits of the very people who demand that I go out and drink with them every week.

This seems like madness, doesn’t it?  Well, it isn’t, really.  Any community demands a certain amount of buying in.  People pay to join bowling teams, congregations, scout troops, colleges, fraternities, dojos, congress, and street gangs.  Only prison is free to join.

The fraternities angle in particular rubbed me the wrong way for some time because I joined a fraternity at school.  People like to throw around the attack “I don’t need to pay for my friends, TYVM.”  But, yeah, you kinda do.  If you’re in college you’re paying tuition to stay there.  If you join other clubs you’re paying dues to them.  If you just stay friends with your buddies back home you’re commuting to be with them or trading Magic cards with them or paying to ride their sisters.

Improv is quirky because if you want to get sanctioned by a theater and put up shows under that theater’s official banner, you have to take their training courses.  That makes it less like a bowling team and more like a conservatory.  You go to shows at performance schools to watch students trained there put on shows.  Is that a pyramid scheme?  Well, yeah.  But the shows are good.

The difference between someone who forgoes the system and just improvises independently is that free agents miss out on a lot of great training, get far less stage time, and perform to slimmer audiences.  And in the end, it’s financially zero-sum either way.  No one is making any money at this.  We pay at first because we want in on the fast track.  And we keep paying each other with each other’s money because after a certain amount of time you get to just break even.  If you’re good enough, you can climb to the rank of “at least I’m not leaking cash all over the place for this anymore.”

And if product is the excrement of action, the effect of all this is a wonderful industry of hilarious and interesting people staging once-in-a-lifetime shows at the top of their abilities.  It’s expensive, it’s just a hobby, and leads nowhere productive.  Just like bowling.

My 20-Year Plan

I’ve never been much of a long-term goal setter.  In fact, I only became interested in planning next steps even in the short term within the past few years.  I can’t imagine what it has been about these recent times that caused me to seriously consider what the future holds.  Probably a little less booze and a lot more Ali Farahnakian had something to do with it.

Anyway, here’s my plan:

• Keep working as a QA tester, release manager, etc for my current employer.  It’s important that I stick with QA because I’ll have to remain in this position during the next step, which is
• Go back to school part-time for programming and finish my degree in computer science.  This is in here because my current employer has offered to basically cover 90% of tuition after I’ve  been here three years.  Once my degree is done I work here for one more year to qualify for the education benefit, then
• Get a job as a QA manager for a video game studio.  At this point I’ll have a degree in computer science and like 8 or 10 years in QA experience.  I hope that’ll be enough.
• Design games and write about game design the whole time.  I’m thinking board games, but whatever’s clever.  I hope and pray that this can turn into a lucrative startup business so I can
• semi-retire and just move board games from my own company.  Hire a sick game-making crew.  Get myself a set of golf clubs.  Meet Jason Rohrer.  Die.

Except for the part where I die, I want all this to happen within 20 years.  If the education benefit from my employer gets recessionized, the next few steps will change.

What’s your 20-year plan?

Printers Suck

I’m doing a little spring cleaning on my old hard drive and just uninstalled the drivers for my previous printer.  Why does the support software for any printer need to exceed 200 MB?  Why is installing a printer on a Windows computer still handle through a relatively archaic networking protocol?  Has  anyone ever heard of an iPod?  You install iTunes, plug your iPod in, and the thing syncs right up.  When my iPod breaks I plug it into my computer, walk away, and by the time I come back it’s fixed.  If my printer breaks I may as well just get a new printer.  The printer I have now will turn itself off if I leave it idle and won’t turn itself back on again unless I  unplug/replug it.  Toner is expensive.  No printer setup software has ever had an intuitive design.  And the software they give you to make scanning, copying, printing, and fixing the printer is usually the ugliest consumer software available.

I guess it’s asking a lot to have a  computer control a device that physcially changes a piece paper from blank to containing something.  But is it really?  Weren’t printers around before monitors were?

If any aspect of home computing is ripe for a huge redesign, it’s printing.  Screw tablet-sized iPods.  Let’s get a cheap, easy, good-looking printer with software that I like to use.

Responses to a Prank I Played Today

You are very, very good. I think I do this prank where I pretend to liquify peanut butter in the microwave and then pour it down your pants. Then, I reveal, it was soy nut butter! Haw haw!

Seriously, you got me nasty. You fucker.

and

That is so amazing!!!!  Way to go!  It’s so hilarious how pissed[they] get.  Ha ha ha.

and

DAMNNNNNNNNNNNNNN

…I WAS FOOLEDDDDDDDD

and

BASTARD! BASTARD BASTARD BASTARD!

(well done.)

BASTARD!