Author Archives: Eric

My Birthday

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I’ve made another full spin around the sun. It was my birthday yesterday. I am now shockingly close to being 50 years old. I’m not there yet, but that thought has started creeping around in my head. Does it have some kind of deeper meaning? I suspect that if it does, I’m missing it. It has been pointed out to me lately that I am likely missing quite a few things and that I am notably unobservant about certain things.

In an attempt to take a closer look and attempt not to ‘miss’ anything I’ve been giving the birthday and age thing a few thoughts.

I’ve reached that nebulous age that you can never picture when you’re a kid.

I went through the stage where I claimed I didn’t like girls. I claimed I would never date and certainly never get married (deep shudder). Then I started to figure out that dating was OK and maybe – just maybe girls were acceptable to speak to.

Then there was dating and all the early kinds of things people go through. Do I go and talk to that person? What if they reject me? What if it’s totally publicly humiliating like last time? Is anyone actually interested? What if I never find anyone?

I started trying to picture the future – and it never looked like it does now. It involved the job I have now but the work was the only clear part. I didn’t have anything else particularly nailed down. I thought I did, but looking back on it I realized I had no actual plan. Then I found someone. Well, I thought I’d found “the one”. She didn’t agree, and that hurt quite a lot.

Something I’ve learned over time is that generally speaking I will wind up where I am supposed to be. All of the circumstances surrounding that particular relationship and the subsequent messes following that brought me to the point where I DID meet the one. It has been a crazy journey since then – but NOTHING that you dream about as a kid. It’s not any single thing, but so many little things that the journey brings along with it.

So here I am in that grey area – more than just the hair – where kids tend to not dream about being. That area has brought with it a lot more introspection (or what some folks have deemed ‘naval gazing’) and thoughtfulness about birthdays and their deeper meaning.

In short, I’m doing great. Right on target. I expect to have a fancy new mid-life crisis sports car very soon now – I’ll let you know what color!

Schedule!

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For around 25 years now I’ve been attending the Baltimore Science Fiction Society‘s annual convention. It’s the convention I consider “home base” as it was the first one I ever went to.

Once again this year I am delighted to be an invited guest and will be speaking at a number of panels and attending a book launch (GO JEFF!).

IF any of you are headed to Baltimore this weekend and are interested, here is my schedule:

Finding Your Space in Fandom
[7] Room 7029, 5pm – 5:55pm

Fandom can be big, but we can find each other based on our specifics interests, mutual friends, and online hangout spots.

SMOFing for Fun (But Probably Not Profit)
[12] Club Lounge, 10am – 10:55am

Running conventions is fun, but it’s also akin to herding cats or nailing jello to a wall. Come talk to SMOFs about steering the group, organizing events, and keeping afloat.

What Makes a Good Book Review?
[12] Club Lounge, 11am – 11:55am

There are many ways to approach writing a review. How much do you recap? How much do you focus on the themes or characters? Should review from your own experience or that of the average reader, and how much of a review is just the rating?

Reading Outside Your Genre
[5] Mount Washington, 6pm – 6:55pm

If you only stay within genre you love to read, it can be hard to figure out where to best start exploring outside your comfort zone. How can you learn to enjoy books you might not otherwise be interested in, and how do you approach difficult-to-read and older styles of writing?

The End (of the secret)

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It’s been much longer and more drawn out than I anticipated posting all the things I wrote about being a Neilsen Family. I think this final post is a fair comparison to the entire experience. If you’ve been reading along you might think, “Huh, I kind of forgot all that stuff…” and by the end that’s kind of where I was with plugging the number into the remote every time I watched TV. It sort of became this afterthought rather than some kind of actual, accurate tracking thing in my mind. We’re close to a year since all the equipment went away and I can say that while intellectually I might miss the influence, I most certainly don’t miss tracking stuff and having extra buttons laying about.

Another interesting note? The amount of television watched has fallen back off a cliff. People will say, “have you watched…” and generally speaking the answer is no. There just isn’t enough there for me. Sure, there are quality shows out there and things I want to watch, I just don’t feel the need to rush out there to see any of them. I never did get to that ‘one more’ entry I thought I would get (unless you count this one). Here’s the final entry in the ‘secret’ series:

June 27, 2017

Habits are hard to break. Going cold turkey is certainly a way to break a habit. I was told last night by my wife that the folks from Neilsen called. They will be stopping by the house today and unhooking all the monitoring stuff from our home.

That’s it, we’re done. Cold turkey indeed.

It’s actually difficult to believe that it has been 2 years already. In that same breath I also find myself thinking it’s a good thing to stop now. We’ve gotten into a routine with the monitoring equipment and there are a lot of days when I actively question the accuracy of what we’re showing. How many times have we not had the right folks listed compared to who’s actually sitting in the room watching (or listening) to what we’re playing? Hard to say.

How many times have I come home to find that the music I had been playing when I left (and allowed to continue to play for those staying at the house) was done and everything had just been sitting there waiting for me to come back and “check in” for the purposes of ratings?

How accurate are those ratings when we switch to a streaming service and avoid the regular TV channels? We are well into the worst part of the year for television in my opinion – it’s terrible. More terrible than I normally find it. We have the system on, but most often are playing music via a streaming service. Does that count?

What I would love to know is what our profile has looked like over these 2 years. I have no doubt that we’ll never be able to see or know any of that, but I think it would be fascinating. What did we say we were doing / watching vs. what we were actually watching in terms of hours on the system? Information that is up for sale…

And that’s the reason for the big secret all this time. What we’ve sold to Nielsen is something they’ve packaged and sold to somebody else. We’ve had our time, we’ve tried to show what our preferences would be and in the end we’re just part of the larger numbers that broadcasters are aiming for.

I hope the few shows I really like survive. I don’t believe for a minute that the shows we don’t care for will suffer for us not watching them. I would hope that, but we are still clearly not the target demographic for a lot of stuff.

I suspect there will be one more blog entry after this. The post departure impressions and how things have changed after all the monitoring equipment left the house. How the kiddo will deal with the change (or if she’ll notice). Hopefully all this will prove to be interesting reading (if only there were a way to track that…).

Ready Player One – A Review

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Ready Player One

I went back and looked. I didn’t realize that it had been almost 5 years since I read the book. You can read my old review of the book here.

IF you’re interested in a synopsis of the book from a slightly different point of view (with spoilers), feel free to check this guy out (he’s really clever and I like his work) THUG NOTES.

The movie itself.

If you haven’t seen the movie yet – yes, there will be spoiler stuff in here. There has to be in order to cover my specific thoughts on the film. Before I get to that part, here’s the short, non-spoiler version:

It was a well done movie. There’s a lot of visual stuff that’s worth your dollars to see it on the big screen. I didn’t see it in 3D, but I bet that would actually help this movie. Go see it and support it, we want stuff that isn’t a sequel or a remake of TV shows from the 70s or 80s.

After this is the spoilery bits – you are warned.

I really did like the movie, but I went into the theater completely prepared to be disappointed. That might have helped my outlook by the end because it was better than I was afraid it was going to be when we got to the end. A number of my fears DID happen to come true and that made me more than a little sad.

There are a number of things that were different from the book. Yes, we know this and it happens to every film. The book ranged over worlds and games and took a really long time to cover certain ground. It wasn’t descriptive so much as pointed out pop culture from the past. There were going to have to be changes in order to make the movie work. The problem is changing or tweaking just the right thing and not losing the tone or message that made the book the success it is. There were three parts to that in my mind – the pop culture, the challenges and the characters. One at a time, in reverse order –

The characters. I know the story centers around Wade. The book has had some criticism about how his character plays out. The movie actually doesn’t do badly with him, and helps to get away from the stalker aspects of his character as he is shown in the book. The rest of the characters however have been ‘adjusted’ by Hollywierd. Wade gets taken to work for the sixers, not Art3mis. The movie takes her instead. Aech’s story is mostly background, but the part in the book where she’s playing as a white guy because she gets more respect didn’t need to be chopped out. Her avatar for the game should have still been a white guy. That bothers me. The movie hints at danger for the characters, but this is the movies – none of the main team actually dies. That’s not the case in the book. I don’t know if it was a ratings thing or if it was deemed to be bad for the story – I’m not sure. Whatever it was I think it weakened the movie when it didn’t need to. I loved that Simon Pegg was in there. I could have done without the changes to Og’s character, but it was less noticeable. His part was small but very good. The portrayal of Halliday was exceptionally well done. Much more than I had hoped for. That part of the characters was fantastic.

The challenges. I know there was some effort made to engage with people who don’t remember the 80s and don’t particularly care about any of the nostalgia related things in this story. I get it. You need to make the money back that you put into the product. WHY would the Dungeons and Dragons portion of the challenges have to be dumped? They only call outs – despite appearing to have the go ahead from WoTC (and I watched for that in the credits) – were a t-shirt, a couple of posters on a bedroom wall and the face on the back of the van. Yes, that face is from the original art in the module that is the challenge in the book. WHY? I fail to understand that. It can’t be some leftover garbage from the days of the satanic panic can it? Has the film maker in this case fallen back onto news from the 80s in the decision making process too? The Shining wasn’t even in the book! IF there was going to be a movie that would be referenced it should have been Ladyhawk. Cannon! IF the argument for removing the dungeons and dragons references is some attempt to connect with a modern (non-80s) audience The Shining sure isn’t the way. In fact, since Stranger Things hit there’s been a resurgence of Dungeons and Dragons. It would in fact make MORE sense to include it than not! That leads me into the last of the three portions.

The Pop culture. Fine, I’ll give you Iron Giant over Leopardon for a giant robot. Fine. We got Rush music in one trailer and then it wasn’t in the movie. Sure, there are scads of background things that you could pick out – but get them right. Atari 2600 plays a central role to all this AND THEY GOT THE DETAILS WRONG. The controllers on the one game console they show are for the Colecovision! IF you’re going to send people looking for Easter Eggs expect to be called out on that sort of thing. People are going to be pulling this apart for a long time. Again – a little bit of effort and it’s soooo much better. There were a lot of things that just dragged at my willingness to go on this ride and tried to pull me out of the story.

In the end, yes this is a good movie. It should be supported on the big screen so that we all continue to see many and varied offerings like it on the big screen. If you go in with low hopes, no nostalgia hooked into your brain nor any desire to see a particular portion of the book displayed ‘just so’ then you won’t be disappointed. I did like it, and I will own it at some point but maybe not until it falls into the discount bin or the clearance shelf with all the other nostalgic things that got put back in the closet.

The Secret Counted

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Well, it counted a little anyway.

This is another in the few remaining posts of my thoughts from when I was part of the Neilsen rating system. I’ve mentioned before about the company’s request to keep this a secret. This was one of those times when I didn’t want to, but it would have felt entirely self serving. It in fact feels entirely too self serving to “tag” the person I mention in this post. I did what I could, when nobody was watching.

April 4, 2017

Miraculously, when the end of our trial period came up in late December / early January the company we get our TV from extended our ‘bonus’ time for signing up out another year. I did not call them to complain. I did not call them at all – they simply did it.

I can’t say they know, but doesn’t that seem suspicious? When has a cable company ever given you anything for free without you demanding they make up for being shitty?

Suspect I say. Suspect.

It’s been longer between my entries here than before. I think it’s because we’re coming up on the two year mark for this and it has just… faded. I still know it counts, I still log in when I start up the TV but there’s no enthusiasm. There’s nothing on the program schedule that I really want to see. There’s very little I’ve been really interested in supporting. I can say the one exception to that is when Myke Cole started promoting a show that he was going to be on. THAT was exciting. I tuned in live and logged in to have my ‘vote’ count for as much of the season as I possibly could. Anything I couldn’t get to live because of my schedule I went back and looked at on demand via the television provider service (rather than an on-line service). I have no idea if I made a difference or not. This was another one of those times when I desperately wanted to say something – but had to keep it to myself. I tend not to watch, like or enjoy reality television, but the CBS show “Hunted” fell into the exception category. It was very interesting. If you can still dig it up on demand someplace it’s worth some of your time to check it out.

The End Is Nigh!

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I know there’s at least one person out there actually reading these posts and the stuff I’ve been pushing out here about my time as part of a ratings family has been uneven in its release. Honestly, it was uneven when I was writing it and more so when I was actually clicking the box. I think I’ve only got 2 left after this one. From football / election season, it’s interesting to look back.

November 11, 2016

I ran for cover since the last time I wrote something for this. It was election season. It was such an acidic, nasty and overpowering beast of a race that I just couldn’t watch. If I was watching something, it was an on demand show where I could hide from the commercials. I attempted to watch some football, but the commercials that bombarded me approximately every 3rd play were horrific. I turned away.

Along those lines there have been any number of news articles lately about how the ratings are way, way down for the NFL this year. The NFL regularly draws big numbers, but not so much this year. Guess what? Part of that is me. Most people say that, but this time it’s actually kind of true. I’ve tuned out. I couldn’t stand the political stuff grating on my last nerve after long days. The games themselves have become slow, angry affairs where grown men argue like children in the playground. Multi-millionaire players dance and flash finger symbols and whatever else after every play. EVERY PLAY. How about be a professional and just play the next play. Don’t dance. Don’t gesticulate or gyrate. Nobody gives a flaming bag of dog shit that you made your 53rd tackle of the season. Do you job and shut up. Nobody working double shifts wants to hear how a 6 year 48 million dollar contract wasn’t enough and you had to do right by your family. Shut UP.

The NFL also suffers from the old contracts it’s got with television stations. I say this because it was another reason I turned the games off. I was watching a team that I like and don’t get to see very often. They were winning. Rather than letting the game play out somebody decided to go to a game that was tied and likely to head to overtime. More competitive, more exciting. I was angry that I wouldn’t get to see my favorite team, but a more exciting game would be good. Fine. The teams were in the same conference and one of them was likely to end up in the playoffs against my favs so worth a look.

THEN THEY STOPPED PLAYING THAT BROADCAST JUST BEFORE THE POTENTIAL FINAL SCORE BECAUSE THEY HAD TO SHOW THE LOCAL TEAM THAT CAN’T WIN A DAMN THING AND COULDN’T BEAT A SOLID HIGH SCHOOL TEAM.

Needless to say, I was somewhat upset. I simply shut it off and walked away. My voice actually counted this time though. At least a little.

Along those lines, this is supposed to be a secret. Secret so that our family is not unduly influenced in any way about what we watch or how we interact with sponsors. Well, if everything about this is supposed to be a secret – why would Nielsen plaster their name all over the remote controls they left here? Like it’s a brand somebody would shop for. I ask this because it’s difficult enough trying to get the data put into the little box on the TV when we have guests without arousing suspicion about what we’re doing. I have some very clever friends. Nobody has to be clever when they are over for an evening, pick up the remote and say, “Huh, Nielsen. So you’re doing the TV ratings thing, right?”

So much for secret.

I’m supposed to let the company know when somebody knows, but I have become suspect of this whole ratings thing. It has become something that is so routine now as to be defaulted to where it was when we turned the TV on, no matter who is here or what’s going on. My ID has become the one that gets left on when my wife walks away and doesn’t want to change the music channel we listen to. I’ll have taken the kiddo out to the dojo and will come back 2 hours later – but my ID is still the only one logged in. I hit the button and it’s all logged, even though I wasn’t actually here. Suspect at best. Flat out skeptical most of the time.

We’re coming up on the end of our promotional (free) time for the TV channels that we have. It’s actually the only reason we have TV beyond what we can stream from the internet or Netflix. It will be interesting to see what happens once that changes.

Incredible(s)

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I went back and searched to see if I had mentioned anything about The Incredibles before and it turns out I hadn’t. I should have mentioned it because it is easily my favorite Pixar movie.

I relate to Mr. Incredible WAY too much. No, I’m not a super, but I totally see myself sitting in the cubicle at the insurance company (been there, done that). I see the exhausted parent parts and could just watch a well written movie about nothing more than parenting as a super.

I can’t say I’m usually excited by “Part II” of any franchise really. It didn’t feel like a great idea to make another movie with the family, even if Jack-Jack would be hilarious. I could be wrong. IF you haven’t had the chance, go and check out the trailer. It looks like this might be a sequel that will work.

The Winter Olympics

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That’s it. They’re done. No more Olympics. We’re done for another couple of years. Did you watch? Did you catch highlights? Did you just look for the medal count on a web site someplace?

I will admit that I watched an exceptionally small amount of Olympic coverage. There were a number of things going on in my life and television just wasn’t on the list of things to do – no matter what the athletes or teams were doing. I’ve been scanning headlines and one that jumped out at me was about NBC. The network is claiming that they’ve made money, but that viewership is down yet again.

At this point I’ve got to believe they’re down to like just the ski teams moms and that guy named Murray that really wants to talk to you about curling brooms the way they report it. I’m not buying it. They were quiet upset about viewership when I was clicking the ratings box back in 2016. Here’s another of my writings from my Nielsen time:

August 22, 2016

I keep thinking it’s been longer since I’ve written here last. It’s been a little less than a month. I couldn’t keep away from this one though. I hope the ‘permanent link’ works.

Did Millennials Ruin The Olympics?

The title about millennials wrecking the ratings? How about the broadcast being something I can’t be bothered with? It’s worse than the NFL when it comes to commercials and over-killing the ‘feel good’ story of whatever athlete was coming up next.

Look, I get it. The Olympics are supposed to be the pinnacle of athletic achievement. Once you wade through all the cheaters and poorly behaved morons there are some really wonderful stories out there. There were some amazing things accomplished this year. I read the news articles, watched the highlights and only tuned in a handful of times. I don’t care about Spain’s beach volleyball team. I’m sorry, I don’t. I’m not going to watch them play against Abiza or whatever country has a qualified team.

So – I took my ratings and watched something else. I’m at the top end of that rating category, but still in it. I just wasn’t moved to watch 900 hours of program. When I did take some time and sit in front of the mind sucking machine – I generally watched something that didn’t challenge me (and then I ended up falling asleep most times because 5 am gets here early). There was no way I was staying up until midnight all week to see the results of a 30 second competition that I could catch any important highlights of the next day.

I know there are likely advertisers and tv people out there that want to know *why* I wasn’t interested. I’m not sure I can put a finger on it exactly. I just wasn’t interested. I didn’t tune in. Ratings were down 20% compared to the last Olympics – and I suspect the next games will have even worse ratings… but I won’t be part of the ratings “officially” then as I’ll be past the end of the time I can be a Nielsen Family.

Not For Me

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The family and I went to see Black Panther tonight.

A movie that is part of the Marvel cinematic universe gives one high expectations. It brought a lot to the table in an attempt to meet those expectations.

My wife loved it. She wants to see it again and has told me that we will own the film.

BUT you might be asking, what did you think of it? You’ve said what it is, but not what you thought of it. True.

This movie met all those expectations. It was a gorgeous film. The costumes, the backgrounds, the action and the colors were all a treat for the eyes. It was a good story. All of the characters were believable people (with some leeway for the fact that this IS a comic book film of course). The emotions, the love, the ferocity shone through. No pandering, no excuses, just an excellent cinematic work.

I believe all of what I just wrote there, but I also believe something that might not sound like an endorsement when it truly is. This film was not for me. I thought it was great. I’m crazy happy that it’s killing the box office. The women in the film were stunning. There was so much to see that I’ll watch it again and again without doubt – but this film was not for me.

And that’s great. It’s fantastic. That’s exactly the point. There is so much stuff out there in movie land that IS for me and fits with all the things I’ve always seen in the movies that this film was long over due. There needs to be amazing movies out there for everyone. As they say in this movie, the world is getting smaller. Seeing and learning about something that isn’t you is going to be a vital tool moving forward. It matters that the characters never apologized for the times they didn’t just speak English so everyone could understand. Not having hair that works the way yours might – or not having hair at all is not a detriment to beauty.

It also matters that my daughter went to see this. She’s not viewing this with a jaded eye. This is the sweet spot for story telling for her. She’s at the exact age where films and big event things like that will stick with her into her adulthood. I remember to this day all the amazing films that came out when I was her age. All the characters that blasted onto the screen for me. Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Indiana Jones, Rocky, Superman… seeing the connection with them? Yeah, they’re all “for me” being powerful white guys. I asked my daughter who her favorite characters from the film were. Who was the hero of the film? She said the general, or the king’s sister. She liked the warrior and the scientist. Not some person just waiting about to be rescued or randomly fall into love at first sight and get married, but people of action and determination. Strong, caring and intelligent people that do what they need to for their home and their family.

This movie was not for me – and that is what matters the most. Go see it. Support the diversity and the connection that something like this can represent.

Illumination Required

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Illuminae (The Illuminae Files, #1)Illuminae by Amie Kaufman
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

I really liked this book. I liked the story, the world building and the characters. There was some very thoughtful stuff in there. There’s action and tension and the real sense of danger you don’t get from a lot of books without being over the top.

This book also brought up some questions that are worthy of discussion from a publishing point of view. It was an interesting choice to put the story forward as a series of found documents and compiled messages or reports. That certainly helped the speed of the book, a very quick read. What didn’t work for me was the tiny font that actually carried story information across waves or swirls or ship patterns.

To be fair about this – I was reading on an electronic device. That might make a difference. IF I had been reading a hard copy of the book, perhaps the swirls and such would have had a better feel. As it was, even when I attempted to use the e-reader’s ability to make fonts larger or zoom on pictures it was a fail. There were parts of the story I missed just because I couldn’t read it. That was very frustrating.

IF you’re going to get a copy of this book I recommend it for the story, but not so much for the layout.

View all my reviews