Discussion Cont'd: Grown Ass Men With Braids in Their Hair

I was looking for a pair of clippers online that were recommended for black hair when I stumbled across this gem of a blog post. ROFL! After reading the post and the comments I just felt like I had to make myself heard. So hear goes:

I used to wear braids when I was in college, but had to stop when I graduated and got a full-time job. It wasn't because they told me to or because I was scared that it would hold me back, it was because braids are expensive as hell! As a hairstyle, the amount of upkeep, time, and money required is way too costly for most adult men.

Once I was out of college, and on my own, it was kind of hard to find women that wanted to braid my hair. My gf (now wife) was working too, so it wasn't like she wanted to take 2 hours out of her day to do it while I played Madden. And paying someone to do it in a shop was mad loot at the time. Actually, I'm making decent money now and I still can't consider paying that much every week for my hair.

I think that's the point the OP was trying to get at. If an adult male is spending that kind of time and money on their hair then their priorities are crazy suspect. However, every adult male has some hobby or activity that is ridiculously unnecessary and immature. I know women would say the same thing about me and my video games and a few other things I'm into. But ladies, that's what makes us, well, us - it helps shape our identities.

I definitely think she was on to something but to use braids as a litmus test is a little ignorant. It's how well we're able to fulfill our adult responsibilities that determines how immature we are or aren't. Now if dude has braids, plays video games, and collects sneakers then you might have a problem...oh wait that's me if I don't get these clippers soon...hmmm

Challenge Accepted: LiquidJ throws his hat into the Restaurant Game Design Challenge

I've never met a challenge that I couldn't walk my ego away from and this was just too tempting to do. Some people do Sudoku on the train. I like to work the mind out a little bit more. Please let me know what you think.

The Rules: http://gamecareerguide.com/features/706/gamecareerguides_game_design_.php

The Submission:

Game Name:
Fork and Spoon

Synopsis:

Fork and Spoon challenges would-be-restauranteurs to design and manage a full fledged restaurant far beyond their wildest dreams. The game tries to simulate this challenge in an accurate yet fun way that will appeal to gamers and non-gamers. Through its isometric perspective and use of proven gaming concepts Fork and Spoon teaches, drills, and assesses the player's ability to do 3 important tasks: identify profitable niches in a competitive market, manage a competent team, and keep the ship on course. The player enters the ruthless restaurant business naive and cash-poor with only their dreams of yachts and a posh lifestyle to comfort them. They leave the business with some fulfilled dreams, a sense of accomplishment, and a new mantra, "Time is money people!"

Objective:
Obtain the top spot on a leaderboard that rates players based on how well they were able to use the business to fulfill their dreams.

Detailed Description:

"identify profitable niches in a competitive market"

• There are many restaurants in the area and players will have to adopt a strategy that allows them to stand out amongst them. They do this by looking at what the competition is doing, and the changes they have made over time, and adjusting their plan accordingly. Does their new outlook require them to stand out based on their food, their prices, their atmosphere, or all of the above? Players will be asked to make this decision at the beginning of every level through easy to use sliders that represent how they will budget their available funds.

"manage a competent team"

• Now that they have poured their money into the appropriate buckets, users must spend what's left over from their cost of materials (food, rent, improvements, and utilities) on employees. After adjusting their identity, players are given the chance to hire and fire employees in 3 areas of their restaurant: the kitchen, the dining area, and the bar.
  
• Based on a system borrowed from strategy-role-playing games, the game will present players with a large list of candidates to choose from. The list will contain information concerning their personalities, backgrounds, performance, desired salary range (players bid within the range and hope that a competing restaurant does not offer more). In addition to the list of what's known about applicants is the list of what's unknown. Each employee also has a list of performance affecting traits that can only be discovered while they are on the job. These traits can be strictly positive, strictly negative, or both. Here are two examples:

1. Trait: flirtateous - This employee's customers of the opposite sex will be more forgiving, but all coworkers of the opposite sex in their area will perform worse.
   
2. Trait: smoker - This employee takes a break more often than normal and, if they work in the dining room, will make guests less forgiving.
   

"Keep the ship on course"

• The player will be responsible for escorting patrons to and from their seats and filling in wherever their system breaks down. This gives them the power to micromanage and puts them in charge of the most important part of a restaurant - the customers. When a customer appears at the register it means that they must be seated as soon as possible. When a paper check appears over a customers head then they must be escorted to the register as soon as possible. It is at this exit stage where the user will find out if the customer had a satisfactory or an unsatisfactory experience. There are also 7 things that can pop up over time taking the player away from their primary job.

1. Kitchen Breakdown - The dishes are piling up. The glasses need to be washed and brought to the bar.
   
2. Dining Room Breakdown - A table needs to be cleaned and the dirty dishes should be brought to the kitchen sink.
   
3. Bar Breakdown - A keg needs to be brought from kitchen to the bar.
   
4. Kitchen Slowdown - The pickup window is full and the platters need to be brought to the appropriate table.
   
5. Dining Room Slowdown - A tray dropped in an aisle needs to be cleaned up and brought to kitchen.
   
6. Bar Slowdown - Drinks are piling up at the bar and needs to be brought to appropriate table.
   
7. Emergency - Bathroom is out of order. Call the plumber and wait until it's fixed!

The gameplay revolves around a Time is Money system that rewards players for planning and time management without penalizing users for mistakes. It also cleanly addresses the difficulty problem that exists by containing it within the restaurant's struggle to live up to their previous expectations.

Players start each level as a restaurant rated between 1 and 5 Stars. The more stars the player has the faster people come in. Every level can be completed with as little as a 1 Star rating, but a higher rating also affects other things like the forgiveness levels of patrons, the chance of seeing a critic, and the amount of money spent by customers. Patrons enter the restaurant with a forgiveness level that is random but one that generally starts within the same range. Their forgiveness level is negatively affected by time passed, visible breakdowns, and their waiter's performance and traits. If it is empty when they get up to leave then they are considered unsatisfactory. Otherwise, it was a satisfactory visit. A critic is a special customer that dines infrequently at the restaurant and their satisfaction will increase or descrease your rating by one level. A 0 rating will end the game.

The game is split up into levels based on a block of time. At the end of each level the player would have the ability to spend some of their profit, if any, on varying items of their dreams (a new phone, new computer, vacation, new car, house, college tuition, yacht, IRA contributions, etc...). The remainder would get put back into the business in the next round. When players start the next level, they will notice that their competition will have adjusted to increase their competitive edge, the restaurant's costs for materials will go up and its current employees' salaries will increase across the board. Only money spent on dream items is tallied for a leaderboard* entry at the end of a game.

* The leaderboard is meant for bragging rights as well as an educational tool. It should be detailed enough to simply display the type of business each entry had, the highest level they achieved, the average rating of their restaurant across that game session, and the number of profitable levels vs unprofitable levels.

Real Talk: Can we redistribute the Federal Government's Wealth too?

I cannot support this stimulus bill! It is a massive shot-in-the-dark that does very little to address the financial, and social, accountability problems that got us here in the first place. We're making the same mistakes we did with the financial industry bailouts. By not providing the people/states with the motivation to change, we're enabling them to continue their destructive behaviors.

President Obama, Senators, if you want to see things change then you are going to have to "Show Me the Money". I think you get that individuals need relief. But you fail to see that States and Counties need this same kind of relief. If you want to redistribute the wealth to sustainable measures then that's fine by me - but start in your own court. Don't expect the other levels of government to mature and work harder when you are managing them poorly.

The Federal Government needs to fairly share the tax pie with the States and Counties of America. I'm talking true delegation (according to the Constitution Amendment 10) and reduction of Federal tax rates in order to give States and cities the ability to raise their levels up by that difference at most. I'm NOT advocating that the Federal Government continue to hand out allowances like we're little kids. Obviously, we'd have to transition to this as it would have to be earned not given. However, using a couple of percentage points as a carrot for States to get their budgets and programs in shape would allow us to truly shed this "trickle down economics' theory that has crippled our ability to govern.

Game Time: The PS3 Saw The Pricing Backlash Coming

It started last year, but was temporarily abated by a brilliant price cut move: the PS3's value is starting to earn its high price. Since its release, everyone with an axe to grind felt the need to belittle the PS3 as a machine bundled with useless features nobody asked for or would want. However, as this recession continues to peel away the layers of excess, we're starting to see why the Playstation brand has been so successful in previous years. It excels at providing value to its partners.

Who would've guessed after all of the trumpeting at the year end [concerning the record revenues and sales] that analysts would be forecasting a drop in price of video game software? SONY did! Most of us laughed when they packaged the huge HDDs as a standard feature, promoted AAA value software through digital distribution, and created Playstation HOME. Although their arrogance is a little off-putting, it looks like SONY may be the ones getting the last laugh. They expected this shift in the consumer demand and are prepared to not only weather it but to provide developers with more, cheaper ways to market and increase value in their products. It'll be interesting to see how Microsoft intends to increase their position in light of this news.

Real Talk: Kill Bill Vol. 3 Out This Week

So, last week I kind of got a whiff of something foul in the "stimulus" bill. And with each passing day, the odor has gotten more and more pungent. It is to the point where I'll be talking about it and have a Freudian slip that causes me to refer to it as the "spending" bill.

The tipping point for me was the House Vote tallies: 244-188 passing. Does anyone else hear alarms going off? This is not the way to forge ahead when we are faced with an economic problem of this caliber. Compare this with the stimulus bill from a year ago: 385-35 passing. Can we really afford for the country to fragment at this point? The answer is overwhelmingly NO in my opinion. Obama united us further than we were a year ago, but this bill shows that his reliance on the Democrats' ideals and amendments is tearing us apart.

This bill is too big! It reeks of revenge, irresponsibility, and unaccountability. There is no one pill that we can swallow to get us out of this. We are going to have to treat this over time and monitor our recovery with a couple of bills and stimulus injections. It is borderline shameful that the Democrats have tried to pack in as much social spending as they can get away with in here, because it just shows how quick they are to get back to "business as usual".

If they want to make headway in widening the social safety net then they are going to have to prove that it works. Just like the Republicans are going to have to prove that tax cuts will work. We can ill afford to enact huge, complex plans assuming that they will work because they do in their respective theories. And right now that's all these legislators are offering us. It's either their big quick fix or suffer. President Obama, please Veto the bill on principle, acknowledge that you remember the last 8 years and aren't seeking to recreate them on the flip side of the coin.

Grown and Sexy: My Libido has a new theme song

One day, I hope to be fortunate enough to open a dance club. Not like the meat markets my friends try to drag me to. Do any other kinds exist anymore? I want my establishment to be a more energizing and intimate date night for couples than the de facto trendy restaurant. I want to bring live bands back to dance clubs. I want everyone ordering funky drinks that look cool and sound even cooler. I want to see people dressing up to get down. And I want some space. Is that too much to ask?

You're probably wondering why I felt like sharing this. Well, I keep a running list of songs that would make the cut in my dream establishment and I recently found two fun ones by the same artist. Finding two on the same album is very rare. Finding two by an artist that I had prejudged as a sappy suck-up to teen girls is even rarer. So, I have to give him his props: the voice is dope and the vibe is just what I'm after. Thank you Mr. Mraz for helping to keep my dream alive:

Jason Mraz - Coyote (My libido has a new theme song)
Jason Mraz - Butterfly

Game Time: The "Battle Room" is here

I can't wait to get my hands on Starcraft II. The crafty developers at Blizzard have somehow managed to avoid announcing a release date for this game, even though it's been on everyone's must have list since it was announced in 2007.

You might be asking yourself, what could possibly be so great about a game that someone who spends 65+ hours a week testing games could still go cuckoo over? I didn't understand it either at first. I thought it was just a lot of great childhood memories coming back. However, the more I think about it the more I realize how I'm not thinking about how much fun Starcraft used to be. I'm not even thinking about how much fun Starcraft II is going to be. I'm literally foaming at the mouth thinking about another shot at going head to head with some of the brightest tacticians and strategists in the world.

That's right, I said it. For those that don't know, Starcraft is more than a game. In fact, it is more than a sport. It is the stage for anyone and everyone to prove they have the mental dexterity to command battalions and wipeout others without physical violence. The place where children, men, and women alike can anonymously see if they could've made it as a Leonidas, Maximus, George Washington, etc... It is Orson Scott Card's "Battle Room" incarnate. The one I had sought my entire adolescence.

Yea, so.... I can't wait.