I am closing Psychotik Mouse 2.0…. probably forever.

This is not a decision I come to lightly, after something close to a decade of blogging my innermost thoughts and feelings it feels a little odd to be closing down, but it also feels like the right time to do it. My life is different now, the purpose of the blog is different now, and the time has come to say good bye. Fear not, however, as I am not gone completely. I have decided it is time to do something different and start blogging with a purpose. So to that end Psychotik Mouse will now be offering up his opinion on new games and technology.

Psychotik Mouse is the moniker I’ve used as my gaming and online persona for years now. It seems fitting that it comes with me as I make this transition.

So I shall say farewell for now, and if you’d like to continue following me here is a short list of my other online endeavors:

Psychotik Mouse: Game Review – my new endeavor!

PDXChambers – My business site.

Oregon Beer Guy – Celebrating Oregon’s Craft and Homebrew tradition!

Follow me on Twitter!

I am judge, jury, and executioner.

If something goes bump in the night I am that which bumps back.

I am a jungle gym, horsey, and playground.

I am a soft place to land.

My shoulders are the perfect place for a sleepy head to lie.

I alternately know everything and nothing, but always have an answer to the question.

Occasionally my answers are serious.

I can fix anything from a broken toy to a broken heart.

On some days my jokes are funny, other days I am an embarrassment.

I am a guidance, relationship, and career counselor all in one person.

I am all of these things.

I am superman.

I am Dad.

After listening to the man talk about how he just wanted to go out with his friends and not talk about what was happening for awhile, I started thinking about my own life. What would I do if I suddenly found out my time on earth is limited? I’m not talking about the kind of limited we all live with where there’s this vague notion that we’re going to die some day, no, I mean the kind of limited where you basically know when and how you’re going to die.

So what would you do? I have been thinking lately of all the petty disagreements in my life that just don’t seem like they would be all that important in the long run. There are people I’d want to make good with, maybe get some closure on some long standing issues, or go visit places and people I’ve been intending to see but always put off because there would be “time later”. Perhaps I’d even create my own “bucket list” of things to do before I died.

I’d probably do all of those things, but the real question is why wait? We all know that our time on this earth is limited. We are all going to die, it is simply a matter of how and when. Why wait until we get cancer or some other so called “wake up call” to start doing all of these things. Maybe if we lived each day as if it was to be our last we’d be far better off in the long run.  I’d wager that many of the world’s conflicts would dissipate over night if people started to live this way because the conflicts themselves just wouldn’t seem all that important.

I’d challenge you to take a moment to pretend you just found out you only have two years to live. What would you do in the time left? Why not do it now? I realize there is a certain morbidity in this particular topic that makes a lot of people uncomfortable, but if being a little uncomfortable now means a better quality of life in the long run isn’t it worth it?

Which is more frightening… that an IT guy told an end user he doesn’t need AV software or that the user believed it?

I had some concerns that it might be perceived as a slam against the end user, so I thought I’d pose a little background and offer up my thoughts in posting that.  I received a call today from a client who is suffering from a malicious software infestation on his computer.  I won’t go as far as to call it a “virus” because it might simply be a browser hijacker or some other non-virus badness.  Regardless of the symantics of what you call it, the poor user is getting inundated with gay porn on his computer… and trust me… this guy is one of the last people who would want that.  So I’ll be fixing it for him… but in the course of talking to him about it he mentioned that his previous IT guy had told him he didn’t need anti-virus software on his computer, so naturally he doesn’t have any.

So to answer my own question, which is more frightening? In my opinion it is the idea that any IT professional would tell an end user they don’t need anti-virus protection. There is power in what we as professionals do by nature of the trust our end users put in us. There is a responsibility that goes with that power.  People rely on us to know things they don’t and if we tell them something they’re going to take it as the absolute truth.  Part of having a professional around is relying on their experience and expertise, so why wouldn’t an end user take their IT guy at face value?

In my mind, that any IT professional would be so irresponsible as to tell someone they don’t need anti-virus protection on their PC is more frightening than the end user who did nothing more than believe what they were told. So while I’m irked about the situation the source of my ire is not my client, but the bad advice he got from someone who should know better.

Never forget that as a professional you are being placed in a position of trust by the people who rely on you to have insight and information they don’t.  That trust is a sacred, precious gift and you should treat it with all the care that implies.

At least, not here.

I’d like to announce the start of my new blog endeavor… Oregon Beer Guy.  This new blog is my attempt at writing a hobby blog about something I like… beer.  To be more specific, it is a blog about craft beers in Oregon.  It is going to be about not only commercially made craft beer, but also about home brewing and beer related events in Oregon.  You can also follow @oregonbeerguy on Twitter if you’re so inclined.

Additionally, once things settle down for me personally, I intend to get my portfolio/blog up and running for my freelance work.  I’ve got some ideas in mind for the design, it’s really just a matter now of implementation.

Exciting stuff ahead.

Feel free to comment… to scrap or not to scrap… that is the question.  I’m feeling that I really want to move in a different direction, but attempts to keep multiple blogs going have failed miserably in the past.  On the other hand, this blog has been around for nearly a decade…

What to do, what to do… I’ll have to get back to you.

Ok first of all of you never gave it a chance and have absolutely no imagination. You have missed the whole point of secondlife. Secondlife is exactly that, a secondlife, the name speaks for itself, you can do anything you want in there that you can do in real life and then some. People tend to give up too easy. Ok and obviously the blogger of this post has no clue about how to get your sign in info from any website if you have forgotten it. For the dumb out there you usually click the link that says forgot password or login and then give your email you signed up with and then they send the info. Not rocket science, nor is it hard to learn for people with quarter brain power. Also the fact that secondlife eats up quite a lot of memory on your computer might contribute to lag, but if you have a compatible graphics card and at least 1 G of RAM you will not get very far, but again they tell you that when you make an account. Again not rocket science. There is plenty to do n secondlife if you actually gave it a chance and actually explored, and yes those tutorials do help you in navigating through the world, again not rocket science to just take the time to read them. Plus the fact that most of the people who do play secondlife are disabled in real this is their chance to play someone who isnt them to be someone who is able bodied who can socialize without leaving their home. Secondlife isn’t for everyone. But many have gone on to meet partners and get married in real its great for that. But anyway i am done my ranting, if anything secondlife is a better place for not having negative people like you around bringing the grid down with your negative attitudes. People actually make real profits from secondlife and make a real income. There is more than you see just from being their a few hours. But anyway thank god you guys are not in there.

Let me address the commentor:

First off, common sense would dictate that one check the date which a post was created.  The post being referred to here was written two years ago.  It’s entirely possible that some things have changed between then and now.

Secondly, at the time I wrote the post (two years ago) there was no intuitive way to retrieve a lost password or username.  To be fair I went and looked again today and found the links, which would have been helpful… two years ago.

I’ll concede that while my computer two years ago wasn’t exactly state of the art, it wasn’t a bad machine.  I was playing World of Warcraft, Half-Life, and a variety of other heavily 3D rendered games at the time… all without the kinds of lag issues I experienced in Second Life.  Sorry, I don’t buy into the “it must have been the machine” argument.

I’ll also concede that Second Life might be a good place for otherwise disabled people to interact with others on a social level… but it doesn’t change the fact that Second Life is NOT REAL.  At some point or another you still have to come out and deal with the real world.  That’s something that hasn’t changed in the two years since I wrote that post.

Finally, I still stand by my opinion that a fool and his (or her) money is soon parted.  Why on earth would I spend my hard earned real world dollars on virtual property?  As I pointed out in the post two years ago, it’s one thing to pay Linden Labs (or Blizzard, or whomever) a monthly fee to play because that money goes to real world applications like server maintenance and such.  It is quite another to pay a third party for a virtual couch that only exists on some server somewhere.  What happens when that server suffers a catastrophic failure?  Poof… no more couch… and you’re out however much you paid for it.  Again, that hasn’t changed in the last two years. 

I’m not looking to throw stones at the commentor… they’re entitled to their opinion just as much as I am (despite their butchery of the English language in making their point) but if it isn’t clear by now I would like to point out that if one is inclined to comment on a blog or forum post, perhaps it’s a good idea to take a look at the time stamp before calling into question the intellect of the poster. 

I’m sure a lot has changed in Second Life since I originally wrote that post over on my old blogger site, but my overall opinion of the concept hasn’t changed.  Second Life is nothing more than a glorified chat room complete with all that entails.  If you’re into it… fine… I got no beef with you.  Two years ago nothing about Second Life was intuitive.  Their web site sucked, the tutorials were confusing, and I very rapidly lost interest.  Some of my problems with it no longer apply, a lot still do.  So I stand by the spirit of what I said two years ago, even if a lot of the practical stuff no longer applies.

One of the myriad of celebrities I follow on Twitter is none other than Leonard Nimoy.  Today on a whim I checked out his official website expecting to see stuff about his acting projects and what (if any) Star Trek conventions he was planning on attending.  What I found was his photography portfolio.  In fact, there was nothing about Star Trek or acting projects, or anything of that nature.  So for grins and giggles I went and checked out William Shatner’s site, which turned out to be more of what I expected Mr. Nimoy’s site to be like, but a lot flashier.  The experience got me thinking about celebrities and what we think we know about them.

I doubt it’s much of a stretch to say that when most people hear the name “Leonard Nimoy”, or “William Shatner” the first thing that pops into their head is an immediate association with the iconic characters they played on Star Trek.  I think the same holds true for Will Wheaton, LaVar Burton, and Brent Spiner (among others).  What we seem to forget as fans is that the people behind those characters are exactly that… people.  They have their own interests, their own hobbies, and the person behind the character is quite often vastly different than the character.

I think we sometimes forget as fans that while we might know a character well, we can’t really say we know much about the actor behind the character (something both Leonard Nimoy and Will Wheaton have touched on).  For example, we know that Jean-Luc Picard likes Earl Grey tea (hot!) but it is entirely possible that Patrick Stewart hates the stuff and would rather drink coffee.  It would be presumtuous to serve Mr. Stewart a cup of Earl Grey based entirely on the assumption that because Picard likes it so does he.

So imagine my surprise when I discovered that Leonard Nimoy turns out to be a pretty decent photographer, Will Wheaton turns out to be a fellow geek (as well as a devoted husband and father), and Brent Spiner turns out to be … well… Brent Spiner. Seeing that Nimoy is (and apparently has been for some time) a rather avid photographer got me thinking, which in and of itself is dangerous, but I got to wondering what other assumptions we make about celebrities based on nothing more than the characters they play.  It’s a little bit like judging a book by it’s cover alone, while I’m sure a certain amount of an actors actual personality pops through in each character they play, all we get to see is one minor facet of a human being who is just as flawed and complex as the rest of us.

Just something to think about.

“In my next life I want to live my life backwards. You
start out dead and get that out of the way. Then you
wake up in an old people’s home feeling better every
day. You get kicked out for being too healthy, go
collect your pension, and then when you start work,
you get a gold watch and a party on your first day.
You work for 40 years until you’re young enough to
enjoy your retirement. You party, drink alcohol, and
are generally promiscuous, then you are ready for high
school. You then go to primary school, you become a
kid, you play. You have no responsibilities, you
become a baby until you are born. And then you spend
your last 9 months floating in luxurious spa like
conditions with central heating and room service on
tap, larger quarters every day and then Voila! You
finish off as an orgasm!” ~ Woody Allen

(via http://thedailysnooze.wordpress.com/)

I’m not really sure who “they” are, but that’s what they say anyway…

OK, so first thing’s first… if you’re here because you read my final post on my Blogger blog I’d like to extend a warm welcome and thank you for coming.

A lot of things have changed in my life over the last couple of years.  I got married, had a kid, and found a new professional love.  It just felt like it was time to change up  my blog a little bit as well.  So here we are at the new and improved Psychotik Mouse, or as I like to call it, Psychotik Mouse 2.0.

It seems fitting given that I’ve moved my blog to an entirely different blogging platform.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the new digs as much as I am.   I’m very excited to see what the future is going to bring.