Team Fortress II

So I mentioned that I've been playing a lot of games. The Orange Box has been the focus of my attention since I got it, and let me tell you. Steam is amazing. Steam is like AIM for gamers. But the big difference is that you don't need to Alt-Tab out to talk to people while you're gaming. You can just Shift-Tab, and it doesn't hog enormous system memory. It also includes a chat program, but it can be flaky and vent is more reliable. But I love being able to see what games your buddies are playing, and chatting to them while they are playing them. (We had an idea to build a chat program that worked while gaming at one point, but not the time or the funding to build it. Watch someone go and start offering text message orders from a fast-food restaurant and steal that idea from us too. Curse needing to pay the bills...)

So in the Orange Box comes Team Fortress II. It is like Unreal Tournament gameplay-wise. There are different maps, with capture the flag (intelligence), or domination (node-holding) or assaults (attack and defend). But here's the biggest difference between Unreal Tournament and TF2. Classes.

Much like WoW, TF2 has 9 classes. Each one has its advantages and disadvantages. Scouts are fast and can pack a punch up close, but lack survivability and the ability to destroy enemy turrets easily. Demolition men have a grenade launcher and sticky-bomb gun, but lack a true gun. Medics can heal others and become invulnerable for a short time, but cannot heal themselves and barely stand a chance in a 1-1 situation.

Here's the fun thing. You can change your class every 3 seconds if you want to. If there's a sniper pissing off your whole team, sneak in there with a spy and pwn his backside. If there's an engineer building tons of turrets, be a soldier and rocket them to smithereens. If there's a whole group of pyromaniacs on a flag node, mow em down with a heavy. I've been each one for a good bit of time, and managed to get 4 points with all of them. By no means am I an expert at any one. (Though I think I'm a pretty good medic....who would have thunk it, huh?) but you don't need to be an expert to enjoy it.

With different classes, and different maps, it's easy to adapt to another team's strategies quickly. As a result, once you've gotten the hang of the game and have learned the basic layout of the maps, you learn quickly how to avoid death.

The game is very fast paced. When you start out, you feel like you're dying every 20 seconds. That's because you are. For the most part, that's how it goes. Unless you're a sniper in the back or a medic behind a wall healing people in line of fire, you'll likely get pinged by a sniper or blown up by rockets and grenades quickly. So what? Wait 12-15 seconds to spawn and do it again.

Some of the downsides include hacks for people. Some people seem to never die, some seem to move faster, and others even seem to be able to get a head shot even if you're jumping around like a maniac. It happens....players are either very skilled, very cheating, or very both. It still doesn't take too much away from the game. Join another server if it's bothering you too much. Another downside is the learning curve. It took me around 10 minutes per class before I learned how to work them properly. Not to mention the need to learn the maps and learn the strengths/weaknesses of each class in particular situations.

TF2 is a great team-oriented game that you can enjoy by yourself too. And my favorite part, is you can pick up a game immediately, and leave at any time...someone will come along to replace you. It's endless fun learning the different classes and how they operate. Your first backstab as a spy or your first head shot as a sniper are just as fun as the last one you did.

If anyone wants to chat and has Steam, add me to your friends list. My name is killerrobot007. Hopefully I'll see you there!

So what do I do now?

Interesting this should be asked this weekend. In recent history, in the post-WoW era of my life, I've been spending more time with my family. Some of that was long due, but some of it was honestly boredom. It's funny how WoW can fill the time so easily. It had the huge advantage of being able to hop online for even an hour and run an AV or an instance or something to fill the time. Heck, even farm for 15 minutes and feel like you were being productive.

Without that, I've been watching a bit more TV...mostly Pens games, but some Scrubs and South Park as well. However, I've found a plethora of new games to try out.

The first one that I got was Guitar Hero III for the Wii. This is Nick's Wii, but I paid for half of the game...and here is why. Bill (many of you know him as Bootz) got the game and brought it over. I was hooked. I've always enjoyed music, but have never really had the great motor skills with my fingers to be good at guitar. I'm sure if I practiced more, I'd get better. But I can't just sit down with a bass guitar and play for fun. It just doesn't work that way. With Guitar Hero, you can rock out to some of your favorite songs (I love classic and 80's rock) and feel like you're playing along. I've gotten pretty good in the last few weeks, and I enjoy it a lot.

Another game I started to play was Bill's idea. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance for the Gamecube. It is my kind of game. Nick also bought Super Mario Galaxy, which is just classic. So I spent a good bit of time playing those games.

This weekend, Justin and I went to Best Buy at 4:30 in the morning and bought the Orange Box. It contains Half Life II, and its Episodes 1 and 2, Portal, and Team Fortress II, all for $25. Team Fortress is addicting beyond all belief, and I'm not too far into Half Life II, but it's good so far.

I'll probably review these games in depth once I play them more, but that's what I've been playing. I missed a lot of good games in the last year and a half, and while I enjoyed WoW, it feels like I have to play catchup now. And so far, it's been a good time.

Ethix Systems: Part 2

As I mentioned, I got invited to a networking group for our business. What is a networking group? A networking group is a group of businesspeople who meet once in a while (in this case every week) and they "network." For the most part, each person gets to give a 60 second commercial about their business. The idea, is by sharing information about each others' businesses, it will encourage people to spread the word about your business, and you should be able to market your business more effectively.

At this networking group, we met several business professionals who were very willing to work with us. When we began to meet with the different people, they were very interested in learning our story. Since we were young and very new to the business world, these meetings were very good for us. We got to learn a lot of things about how to market ourselves. These professionals offered introductions to other business people, and word about us and our services spread. Unfortunately, it didn't spread too quickly. We had a long time of having very little work. If it weren't for some of the smaller jobs that we did for the people in our group, we would have had nothing to do at all.

As time went on, we began to realize something. Most of our work had come from website design and smaller tech support projects. We hadn't gotten very much programming work. But this wasn't because the work didn't exist. It was because of how little we marketed it. It is much easier to tell someone "we build websites" and "we fix computers" than to say "we build software." However, we decided almost a year after starting our business, to stop marketing our website design and tech support services, and to begin talking about software development.
As time went on, we slowly learned what to say to people to explain what we do. It's a lot easier one on one, so we scheduled a lot of meetings with people one on one to explain what we do. As time went on, we realized the situation that we were in. Not only can we build software well, but there aren't many people out there who can do it. We have a very solid niche market as a result. We are only just now starting to tap that market. As time goes on, people will find out more about what we can do, and will take advantage of the computers they likely already have in their place of business.

If anyone reading this doesn't know what I mean by "building software" it doesn't surprise me. You can start to get an idea about it by checking out our website at www.ethixsystems.com. However, if you want to learn more....tell me. I'll try to explain it better in another post.

Ethix Systems: Part I

Well, since I mentioned in the last post that I would probably post about our business, I think I'll do just that.

Nick (many of you know him as Rubix), my other friend Matt, and I went to Saint Vincent College not 2 years ago. In 2005, Nick had a brainstorm that we could start our own tech business. At the time it was an idea. We didn't know anything about business. But we knew that we were smart, and we could solve all sorts of problems. We figured, as long as you can provide a good service, you should be able to make it in the business world, right?

We formed our company, Ethix Systems LLC, in February 2006 formally. In May, we graduated from SVC, and we went immediately to work.

As I posted before, it's very interesting for people who haven't thought about it, where work comes from. If you ask a high school graduate, they assume that they'll be getting a job. Well how does one find a job? He asks companies if his services are needed. And where does this company get its money to pay you? It gets paid for a product. Who pays them? Their customers.

And then comes the clincher. Where do the customers come from? It's like a company that wants a website. They assume that just because they have a website, people will visit it. "If I make it, they will come." It doesn't work like that, and it doesn't work like that in business either. So we had to market ourselves. We tried cold calling. That sucked balls and didn't work. We got one job from cold calling. Fortunately for us, we ended up meeting a woman who invited me to a networking group. For those of you who know not what a networking group is, you'll have to wait until tomorrow. Because that's when our business finally started to make some money...

From Twiddling to Spinning

So for anyone who didn't know, I own my own business. I should post some time about how it got its start, how our first year went, etc. Since I haven't posted in a while, I think posting about my business is a good way to get back into it.

It's interesting when you're hired as an employee, how easy it is to realize that work must be acquired. It was easy to forget that when I worked at US Steel as an intern. In fact, it could have been easily forgotten that we even made steel. I answered the phone and tried to help people fix their computer problems. Nothing related to steel at all.

At any rate, if a business is at the point of hiring employees, it likely means that they have so much business, they can't do it on their own. But getting to that point isn't easy. There are a lot of times here when we have nothing billable to work on.

We build custom software. It's a good line of work for the most part. There's very little competition. Most people who are good at building software are terrible at marketing. There are few overhead costs. We don't have to buy supplies very often. We just need our computers and our servers running. It was a good business to get into.

The biggest challenge that we face is finding work. Finding people to pay us to build them software. It isn't the easiest task, but we welcome the challenge.

Now back to last week. We have 3-4 projects coming down the pipeline, but they are taking a good bit of time to get going. Getting clients to sign a sales contract and commit to paying us is often an issue. So we were filling the time with whatever we could. Internal stuff, catching up on accounting stuff, it got boring. Plus with every bill I paid, I knew that the bank account was shrinking ever so slowly.

This week, Tuesday morning came as usual for us. Nothing really to do. But then at 1:00 we got a phone call. It turns out someone had a rush job that they needed quoted for a price by 4:00, and completed by 6:00 Friday. Now this project we quoted at 72 hours of work. That's a lot to get done in 3 days time. We quoted them, they signed a contract the next day, and we got to work.

Not only did that happen, but we had a request we'd be waiting for 2 weeks to get, come in the same afternoon. We had two other phone calls from a web design firm looking for a quote on some work for their customers. And I had been trying to setup meetings for the week, assuming that we had nothing to do.

In other words, 5:00 rolled around on Tuesday, and I looked back at the last 4 hours, and thought "WTF just happened.".

I'm not complaining about getting business finally. But I will say, it would have been nice for it to have spread itself out. Now, at least we've pushed enough stuff until next week to guarantee that we won't be bored then.

My dad told me last week, a lot of the times it's feast or famine. I guess I got a taste of starving in the Sahara and being picked up for Thanksgiving dinner at my grandparents. ("Are you sure you're full? Have some more!" my grandmother says.)

Hope everyone's doing well. I'll try to post more often with some more of my life's annals.

Silence

My car's battery was dying, so I took it to the local Advance Auto Parts and had it checked. Once they determined that the battery needed to be replaced, and went ahead and replaced it, I started driving away to an unfamiliar sound. The sound of silence. (Thank you Paul and Arlo.)

My car stereo must have blown a fuse when they did the test. I would need to get it fixed. Wow was it quiet. I started singing songs in my head, because I couldn't stand the quiet. The only time that it's ever quiet for me is when I'm ready to go to sleep. When I'm sitting at my computer, I'm listening to music. In my car? Listening to music. All of a sudden, the silent drive of 15 minutes seems to take much longer. Music always seems to make the time fly by. I would need to get that stereo fixed stat.

The next day, I turned on my car, and again no sound. Same thing the day after, and the day after. Some of these were pretty long drives too. 20 minutes, 30 minutes, an hour sometimes. One particular day, I was driving back from a meeting, and I started thinking about an idea that I had. 30 minutes later, I pulled into my driveway, and I realized that I just did what I haven't done in a long time. I thought through a brainstorm, because it was so quiet. I could concentrate. Instead of thinking about who should win the Steeler game, or what insurance company would save me 15% if I spent 15 minutes at their website, I was thinking about what I should be doing, who I needed to call, and some ideas for our business. Another day, I was pondering the meaning of life (I didn't find an answer, sorry to disappoint. Maybe by next blog entry.)

So it came to the weekend, and I decided that I wouldn't get my radio fixed. Not quite yet. I'm content with the silence in my car. I've started even working on my computer in silence as well. I think better when it's quiet, and so now I think more. Which is a good thing. And you know what I think? I think more people should try to spend less time listening to something, and spend more time just listening.

Family

Now that I'm not playing WoW anymore, I've neglected my blog and haven't posted in a while. I actually started writing a journal (diary sounds so 13th grade girl) instead of keeping a blog, with some of my thoughts on life and just a way to get it down on paper.

But I decided this morning, after waking up that there were some things that were meant to be shared.

I had a dream last night that we were having a family gathering at my grandparents' house, as we often do. My mother's grandparents host our big annual family reunion, going back to perhaps my great-grandfather's children I think. There are usually a lot of people there. And every year, my grandparents look more and more tired in the week leading up to it. I think they are around 80 years old (Is that terrible of me not to know? understand at least this, my mom has 3 siblings, my dad 7. I have around twenty something cousins. Remembering everyone's age is out of the question for anyone outside of your extended family.)

Anyway in my dream, I saw my grandparents doing the hosting of the party, but they looked much older and slower than they usually are. Especially my grandfather. He was going up and down steps that looked much more like ladders when he climbed them, and at the end of the dream, he collapsed in the grass outside. He had simply passed out, because he sat up. I made him stay laying down, and it wasn't too long before I woke up, covered in tears.

I decided to share this because of another story that I have to tell. In the summer of 11th grade (2001 it would have been) I went to Governor's School for Health Care from July 1 through August 4. I met someone there who I ended up making good friends with. We talked about a lot of stuff. One of the things we ended up talking about were our grandparents. He had lost the grandfather that he had been so close to, and impressed upon me the importance of spending time with grandparents while they are on this earth.

We had one weekend that we were able to go home, and so on that Saturday my dad was headed over to visit his parents, and I decided to tag along. My grandmother was a house-wife, having had 8 kids. I never talked to her much, most of my time spent over there was with my cousins. But while I was there I took the time to talk to my grandmother. It couldn't have been more than 15 minutes, but it was something that I had never done. I could tell that she enjoyed it.

The morning after I came back, August 5th, I found out that my grandmother had passed away in the night due to heart failure. Apparently she had a disease that doctors have given her one year to live...in 1991. She lived another 10 years, and saw her 17 grandchildren (at the time) grow up. And I had gotten to say goodbye before she left.

This helped me immensely. I don't know if I would have had peace in my heart without those valuable 15 minutes of time that we spent.

I still have 3 grandparents left. I am blessed in this way. But I know that someday they will be gone. I know that someday my parents will be gone, and all of these aunts and uncles that I hold so dear to me. And so my message is this.

Make sure you spend time with your families. Families are wondrous things. They pull different people with completely different personalities together in a loving relationship. Although some families would call themselves dysfunctional, they are still bound by love and the time shared together. I have a very strong family, and I am eternally thankful for that. I pray that I am able to spend more time with my grandparents before they go. But it could happen in 5 minutes to any of them.

You may never get that last hug before they go, so you'll never be truly ready. Even if it's just 15 minutes, make sure you spend time with those you love, just in case something does happen. They will appreciate it, and you will too.