To *that family* from the start of ‘Sicko’

In the movie Sicko by Michael Moore, there is an older husband and wife team which have to move in with their daughter due to the crushing expenses of medical bills. I watched as the Mom & Dad were moved into the house, only to find that a) the place they were being moved into had not been cleaned out for their arrival by their daughter, b) the parents were faced with the prospect of having to sleep in bunk beds because the household they were moving into refused to relocate the computer to someplace else in the house, and c) one of their sons had the audacity to complain about the cost in effort and time that it took the family to relocate their parents while in the same sentence belittling the tens of thousands of dollars of medical debt that they had.

Look, I know that you can edit folks to look much worse than they are, but I have to say that the shots I saw of that family made me pretty upset. I understand that not everyone has a good relationship with their parents, and I don’t know the family history involved, but frankly, it was offensive to watch the callous self-centered adult children who half-heartedly welcomed their parents with resentment and attitude. Is that the level of rudeness and express self-interest that our culture has devolved to?

Italian-American Upbringing

Apparently, I’m the exception to the rule nowadays. Although adopted at birth, I was brought up with the strong family values of an Italian-American family.  We’re loud, we’re up in each others’ business too much sometimes, but we love each other and we look after our own as best we could. My partner even said that if my mom and dad suddenly called and needed to live with us, we’d have to make many lifestyle adjustments and living space arrangements (cats would have to go to neighbors and friends due to allergies) but we’d just do it. Without our parents, what life do we have? Don’t complain about your mother with the mouth that she gave to you. If parents become a burden to us, remember that for the first 21 years of life for most of us, we were just as much a burden to them, if not more. Either help them financially to regain independence, or else move the damned computer out of the office and put in a bed for ‘em.

Especially in an extended family situation like the daughter was in. Her husband was going over to Iraq as a contractor for plumbing, leaving three or four young boys at home for the mom to take care of . If the daughter was thinking, she would see that the benefits of having mentally and physically capable grandparents around for your children are worth more than the cost of rent, really. Ever try to buy daycare services from someone you trust implicitly?

Small comforts 

Well, I suppose I should just take comfort from the fact that the daughter allowed them to move in at all. But still, the son who complained bitterly about having to help his folks move… he needs to be beaten liberally about the head with a clue stick.

My own parents are in their mid-60s, and part of my own personal stress comes from being the oldest child, and yet still not being able to afford property or a way to make good on my familial obligations to care for my parents as they face their elder years should they require it. And let’s face it, eventually they will. As spry and vital as my father is, time is beginning to take a toll on him and his energy isn’t quite what it used to be. Not macabre doom and gloom, just part of the natural cycle of life. My mother is a few years behind him in age, but she’s getting there too. They’re both getting to the point in life when I would really, ideally, love to be able to start taking over some of their financial burdens and allow them to travel or enjoy life, instead of staying chained to jobs for the benefits.

Must just be the education

I must just be hitting on the adjustments of life and living that happen whenever personal growth is occurring. In sanskrit the word for the temper tantrum of the soul which accompanies personal change and advancement is called a “kriya”. I’ve had them before, times when things in life that don’t quite fit well start to seriously chafe and need to be set aside for new patterns and new becomings. Maybe my criticism of that family on Sicko is an outgrowth of my own kriya-in-progress.

Have to meditate on that for a bit. I hope it settles out, soon. You know you’re having a bad kriya when you can’t stand your own company for long sometimes.

It’s bad, and getting worse.

Today I woke up to find that the time on the cable box has been replaced with ‘—-’. Those four dashes are more than just a display change, it’s the shift in wind that indicates a sea change in my life. The cable has been ‘interrupted’. More money now, please, or else it gets disconnected.

Those four dashes have been a constant alarm clock in my life over the past few years. Indicators first of my own forgetfulness, but lately they’ve become the four dashes of the apocalypse.

I can’t compete in this economy any longer. I haven’t been able to make ends meet for a long time, and what’s worse, I’ve been employed full time as a communications professional during that time. The effects of watching what was, in the late 90’s, a lucrative and engaging career choice in advertising and graphic design slowly grind down to sweatshop business models and dehumanizing lack of mental engagement have cumulatively taken a massive toll. Tons of promises, an almost equal number of horrifying financial and remunerative disappointments when those promises were supposed to materialize. And the slow build of horror as all of the fun, creativity, and innovation became ground out underneath the heel of horrible business and strategy decisions implemented by stupid-assed Baby Boomer senior managers who are so completely insulated by their own self-selected ignorance and carefully cultivated ineptitude that they no longer seem to be able to even recognize the horrible price their decisions have exacted on the talent pool of employees and the so-called ‘best practices’ of the industry.

Time is running out.

My time is almost up. If not for the expected arrival of student loans within the next month or so, I would be facing the prospect of giving away my cats, filing for a divorce from my completely-dependent civil union parter, selling all my stuff and checking myself into a mental hospital for the massive breakdown which is coming. Which has been coming for a while now. As it is, it’s going to be a case of holding my breath against the crushing economic pressure while struggling to last until the payments come… I’m betting sometime in April.

And the scariest part of all of this is that I’m sinking very quickly … and I’m working full time still. My current gig, which readers will recall I have just tendered notice on, is not paying enough for me to live off of. My landlady speculated heavily in the real estate boom and was attempting to single-handedly ‘gentrify’ our neighborhood, but the rest of the neighborhood resisted such an effort quite successfully. The result is that she’s got tons of recently refurbished rental property listing at prices that no one in the current neighborhood can afford. Everyone who might be tempted to move into the neighborhood takes one look at the loud neighbors and strange twisted local drama in this ghetto-esque barrio and say, “Too expensive” and move on. The result? She’s feeling the crunch of the real estate bust, and shit rolls downhill to us. We are now being nagged to death, and we’re also having trouble coming up with the rent on time. We never go more than a week or two at the most behind, all part of the juggling act required to keep heat and electric and internet connected, but that’s beginning to get her agitated in the extreme. And yet, she can’t seem to attract anyone but Section 8 folks to come and take a look at these beautiful apartments, because the neighborhood is so shitty. (And frankly, the landlady went for surface looks over actual refurbishings, and at heart she’s still a slumlord wondering why the hell her professional tenants complain so much.)

The allure of academia

Going back to school was an economic decision for me. Change or die, really. I’ve been suffering the breakdown and erosion of my livelihood for the past three years, bouncing around from job to job seeking desperately a situation where the compensation was sufficient to live off of. People look at my salary on paper and wonder how I could be making over $50,000 a year and still struggling to get by, but with one full unemployable dependent (going to school for undergrad on full scholarships to fix that), a debt load from hell, and rent and cost of living prices in Fairfield County, Connecticut that amount on paper doesn’t really translate into anything remotely resembling wealth or survivability.

Unfortunately, grad school is much more expensive than my undergrad education was. If I weren’t already seeing the benefits of this education on my job prospects I would have quit after the first semester, but there’s real value in the perceptions of the marketplace today with having a professional Master’s Degree. Unfortunately, the corporation I’m running away from screaming right now wanted to offer me…. $55,000/year. Yes, that’s right. The same salary ballpark as I’ve *been* making since 1995. Only with over $20K in educational bills to look forward to repaying.

Ummm…. no. Absofrigginlutely not.

This is part of the problem for me. I look around at the job market and wonder whether or not I’ll ever be more than a corporate serf. And when I actually dare to say something about it during salary negotiations or job interviews, *I* am the one with the problem, or so I’m told.

I’m coming pretty close to just giving up entirely on life and letting myself become a homeless person. Or else maybe commit some victimless crime in an attempt to crawl inside the penal system. Use the time inside to hone my criminal networking skills, earn some street cred, get in shape, and come out in a few years with the contacts and connections to begin handling cybercrime for the druglords. I mean, work smarter, not harder, right? Prison has become a vehicle for economic security and potential future career work for those intelligent enough and motivated enough to work the hustle and cultivate a rep for reliability and discretion.

Nah…. I don’t look that good in orange.

Hyperbole aside, it’s bad. Really bad. And getting worse.

I watched The Secret. Hell, I even own a copy. For a while, it was the only thing that helped me to cope with the massive depression that greeted me every morning. There comes a point when all the positive thinking in the world just rings like more hollow promises and unfulfilled opportunities. I loaned it out to a friend and haven’t seen the dvd since. Which is fine by me. The ‘gratitude rock’ I’ve been carrying around since watching it has become a talisman of futility for me, and now serves as a reminder to not be suckered by false hope, but instead insist on cash on the barrelhead.

The way out.

It’s a long shot climb, but I’m aiming high. I’m aiming to own property before I buy property, meaning a house before a headstone, if you catch my drift. I’m going to keep trying to take the project gigs I get as they come, keep going to school (although the gas prices it takes to commute up to Quinnipiac every time I need to get online will eventually kill me, I’m hoping the money comes in just enough to keep me afloat until the semester refunds restore online service at home). I’m going to press on with my education beyond QU. Next semester I will start taking Chinese classes, and try to continue those language studies into my PhD studies as well. Armed with a PhD an a rudimentary fluency in spoken Chinese, I will be in a prime position to either

• a) finally land that cushy senior management job I’ve seen other people flubbing,
• b) emigrate easily to a developing nation, leveraging my language skills and my advanced degree to land a government job as an attaché between said developing nation and China, who will be providing the economic assistance the US once did to developing nations, or
• c) manage to eke out a tenure track position in academia, earn tenure, and live a life of relative poverty but incredible job security.

A or B seem most likely. And if all else fails, there’s always:

• d) get a law degree and become a Big Law document reader because that’s the only position available and give myself a heart attack through overwork or else build up enough despair and despondency until suicide becomes, finally, an improvement on life, passing on my massive educational debt to my named next-of-kin, my old landlady.

Well, it can’t be all bad. The sense of humor is still working. But I’ve got to figure out a way to get through these next couple of years, because otherwise, I’ll be making my homeless-assed way down to the steps of the capitol building and chaining myself to a pillar until something is done to fix the shit that Bush and Dick have left us with. If nothing else, it’ll earn me 15 minutes of fame, a headline, and a footnote in history.

What I don’t understand

What I don’t understand is… if things have gotten this tough for *me*… how the fuck has everyone else managed to get by? I was making a nice bit of cash before the economy made it less than the cost of living. What the hell is going on with the folks for whom $50K annually is nothing more than a pipe dream? Where’s the social revolt? The uprising? The call to arms and solidarity? Why aren’t we storming Sing-Sing like the French did the Bastille? No calls for the head of Laura Bush by the starving masses? How are -they- getting by? I mean, fuck… Connecticut is one of the richest states of the union, and if things are so goddamned miserable here…. wow. It just boggles the mind.

I’m scared, man. I’m scared for myself, and I’m scared for the world. Time is definitely running out. You can tell by the dashes. ‘—-’ No time left. Just dashes.

Blurred lines of communication

Blizzard crested 10 million players of Warcraft this week. Statistically still a small portion of the 6.5B people that are currently drawing breath, but it’s the leader of the pack when it comes to online entertainment right now. A phenomenon this large tends to have some spillover effects into general online culture. Witness the South Park episode featuring Warcraft from last season, for one. There were a couple of articles talking about how the folks who organize and coordinate Warcraft Guilds (Guild Leaders) are claiming those positions as accomplishments on their resumes because of the people-managing skills and communications skills it requires to organize a group of volunteer strangers to accomplish tasks and form social bonds.

 A birth announcement, Warcraft style

Speaking of Warcraft cultural bleedover, Guild leaders, and the population of the planet, the following is a birth announcement from the leader of my own guild, posted on the guild forums.  Emiraven is the guild leader for DIRE BEEF, one of the largest (and oldest continually running) Horde guilds on the Dark Iron server. Ashai is his real-life wife, and also a member of the guild.

“Alexander”, a lvl 1 Droolkin, has joined Emiraven and Ashai in their den in Azeroth.

Naturally, he’ll be playing Horde. He rolled with the following stats: Weight 7lbs, 9 oz, length 19.7 inches. Born 11:37pm Tuesday. No word on talent build yet; my plan is to powerlevel him but we’ll see.

The raid on the Labor Halls took 14 hours and a few tries, but eventually we downed the end boss. Drops to be linked later but I’ve read up and the loot table includes [Syrup-like Stools], [Endless Drool], and  [Cry of a Thousand Sleepless Nights].

If you don’t understand the slang… well, probably the most obtuse reference is to “the raid on the Labor Halls”. In the end of Warcraft, players gather in large groups to go and tackle certain dungeons and high-powered bad guys… called “bosses”, in order to get a chance at rare, legendary loot. The loot that the boss provides once the 10-, 25- or 40-person group defeats her is selected randomly, so everyone wants to know what loot the boss was carrying… what has ‘dropped’. The rest should be easier to figure out.

Congratulations to Ashai and Alexander, who participated, and Emiraven, who was a supportive spectator. Blessings on ‘em all, and wishes for a long and happy life for Alexander.

Classes begin today

Technically they began Tuesday, with the two online courses starting up. But tonight begins the face to face stuff. I was going to go out and buy another 5-subject notebook for course notes this semester, but I still haven’t filled up the notebook from last semester. I’ll use the excess space I have from the classes that were notes-light last semester and port over to a new notebook later much.

Or I could just use one notebook and transpose the notes to Google Documents afterwards.

In any case,I’m trying to actually keep research notes as I go this semester. I’m trying to get into the habit of working online as much as possible, using Google Documents and Google Notes for right now until I find a different/better solution for collaboration online.

We’ll see how long all of this lasts. And for my ICM504 class, which is tonight, I’m going to try and keep the notes in a quad notebook (graph paper) for any layout sketches or work that needs to be done.

Eyes Wide Shut

Remember that movie, one of Kubrick’s odder forays into postmodern life? Well, there’s a great line from that movie which struck a chord inside me when I watched it. At first I didn’t like it because I felt it was a character flaw to identify with that sentiment. As with many things in life, adulthood has revised my opinion of it slightly.

Tom Cruise’s character interacts with a friend of his from Medical School that he runs into playing the piano at a NY Society party, later much. Tom asks the guy why he never finished, and the guy responded, “Because it feels so good when I walk away.”

Obviously not a personal motto

It’s not something that gets done all the time. But I gave notice at my freelance gig today and I have to say… it feels so good when I walk away.  With that one decision, a major source of stress in my life just disappeared. No, I don’t have another gig lined up yet, but I do have options and projects in the pipeline. Perhaps the timing on the day of the stock market plunge is ill omened, but the fit here was bad to begin with and getting worse all the time. I’m leaving on good terms… as good as you can leave on and still leave, I suppose.

Not every difficult task is a challenge to be overcome. Some of them are guides to show where you’re supposed to turn aside.

Maybe I’m getting too picky, but I own the fact that this is a major force in my professional life. I’ve done the schtick of paying my dues and earning my way in. Time to step into a new role. I’ll have to earn a new set of dues, but they’re the ones with a higher paycheck attached and better use of my knowledge and skills and experiences.

Whatever. I’m really unconcerned about it. Three weeks until final day. Feb 8th.  14 work days to go, and counting.   I have nothing solid to leap into, but I do have confidence in the idea that by taking the first step which feels so right I will quickly see the next ones.

And it will feel so good when I walk away. Or rather, toward whatever comes next.

Turning a wall of separation into a reminder of humanity

I (almost) have a BA in Anthropology. (All but two classes passed. Senioritis after 5 years in undergrad is a powerful force on a 22 year-old.)  This colors my view of human beings because I look at a lot of the strife and politics happening all the time and blame it on the animal side of humanity wreaking havoc.  Where we find nations fighting I see generally speaking a few troops of hominids battling over food and mates. We’ve rationalized it into other reasons, but the primary motivation of warlike behavior I personally find in the inability of humanity to rise above instinctual impulses of the biological nature… organization into hierarchies, aggression against neighboring hominids. We’ve moved past the point at which the color of skin or general appearance of the rival troops of hominids is the defining characteristic. Now we’ve invented religion and culture to serve as unifying and identifying marks. But we’re still fighting each other because the animal Homo sapiens sapiens comes hard wired to organize into social hierarchies of some kind and to react violently to intrusions or invasions into whichever arena of society any particular band of Homo sapiens sapiens happens to feel ownership toward.

It’s why team sports have played such crucial roles in societies of every kind. It’s an outlet for the hard-wired aggressive behavior, it triggers the identification with a particular tribe or troop, and it sublimates the instinctual desire to kill interlopers or competitors into socially sanctioned controlled emotional release.

I don’t see this as a demeaning view of humanity. In fact, I find it rather liberating, because it allows us to own our own failings. It’s not so popular with the Judeo-Christian mindset of humans as somehow being separate from or above the natural realm, but I’m not Judeo-Christian.

Attempting Communication with “Other”ness

The reason that I bring that up as a preface to the actual meat of my post is because we human animals produce more than just violence and strife… we also produce communities and bonds. What is it that triggers the antagonistic/warrior violence response from a troop of hominids at any scale, as opposed to groups and individuals which instead trigger community-building instinctive responses? Not every neighbor is a target. Not every relationship between groups and organizations, political or otherwise, is antagonistic.  There are certain behaviors and methods of approaching a group which can be used to diffuse the violent/interloper response and heighten the community/respect response. If we can learn what those behaviors are, then we can use them when approaching groups when our purpose is communication. Encouraging receptivity to allow for minimal barriers to communicating.

The most important step in the process requires recognition of the similarities in the Other hominids standing before you. Recognition that even our own culture and way of living is but one hominid strategy among thousands which are possible. Recognition that the concept of ’superiority’ really only applies to how well any group’s culture deals with that culture’s environment, as opposed to some Platonic ideal of “better” or “worse”.  Once the qualitative judgment is reduced to a relative status, as opposed to an absolute status, communication begins to become possible. With communication can come the shift in emphasis from the differences to the similarities.

The Writing on the Wall

There’s a website being run out of the Netherlands which attempts to use graffiti and the web as a means to help turn the wall in Palestine into a vehicle and a medium for messages of hope, support, solidarity, and the community/connectivity portion of human instincts.  It’s called SendAMessage.  For €30 (about $58US) peaceful Palestinian graffiti artists will spraypaint your message of humanity or community (nothing negative) on the Palestinian wall and send you a digital photo of the artwork.  SendAMessage.nl seems to have done their homework in setting it up so that they are not funding weapons or insurrections, in fact they have clearance for their activities from the Israeli government agencies, according to their website.

Open ID, Data Collection, and the Cost of Convenience

Good title. Better keep this in mind as a possible paper topic.

I’m talking about Yahoo! joining OpenID, a blurb on today’s tech news. The idea behind OpenID is an online ID service which establishes a single identity that subscribing websites use instead of forcing you to log in all the time. The fact that Yahoo! has joined up with this service is what brings the subject to national attention. According to the Brandweek article, several sites and online services, such as AOL.com, already participate in OpenID, typically without their users really being aware of it.

It’s the unforeseen consequences that get ya

I don’t know of anyone who would be opposed to having to log in only once instead of over and over again, if only from the convenience angle of things. I know that I’m a bit wary of any sort of ID service from two perspectives, the immense security risk to individuals, and the immense loss of privacy potential in the system. I don’t think that OpenID.org is up to nefarious purposes, but whenever data is collected it becomes very important to ask some followup questions. Who is going to use this information? What are they going to use it for? How will we know?

The internet has been hailed as a democratizing, liberalizing force on society, but in reality the opposite is just as true. When every move and action that we take is recorded, stored, and available for review without our knowledge or consent, the internet can be a tool which removes personal liberty and curtails individual freedoms quite effectively as well. In fact, I remarked in one class last semester that by inventing the internet, we had actually created the until-then parental bogeyman of “the permanent record” which would follow us all of our lives.

The going rate on personal information?

I’m reading Yochoi Benkler’s Wealth of Networks right now, and in it he discusses the networked information age, and the economic principles behind collaborative “non-market” efforts. It’s an interesting read, and I’m still working through it, so I’ll leave off the commentary for later. However, he does bring up some very important questions regarding the economy of information, which leads to the question of how much our individual personal information (Name, Address, Phone, email address, website, etc.) is worth. It would be nice if the companies which collected our data were legally responsible for reimbursing us for a percentage of any profits which were generated from studies that used that data, but I live in the real world where such things never happen.

At the very least, the Brandweek article is worth the short read. We may not be able to put an actual going market value on what our personal information is worth per person based on the money made off of it directly by marketing and research firms. We certainly can put a value on our own information to ourselves, though.

Warming up to the cold semester

Yesterday, bored silly at work, I checked Blackboard for information on the two online courses I’m taking this semester, ICM522 Comm Media & Society, and ICM590 Collaborative Studio. Lo and behold, syllabi were posted as well as announcements from the professors.  Alex urged the ICM522 folks to begin working ahead. Oy. It might not be the new semester yet, but the warmup exercises have just begun.

This semester will be a very writing-intensive semester for me. It will also be collaboration-intensive as well. ICM522 is being offered with the seemingly Herculean task of having 20-some-odd grad students interacting only online produce a wiki-based ‘book’/'manuscript’ dealing with the role of the modern Professional Communicator within the changing model of how content is innovated, collaborated, produced, and distributed/shared. Should be challenging, and that means ultimately fun but first, frustrating as hell.

More Writing and Online Development

Last semester’s courses were all pretty well distant from each other subject-wise. This semester all of the courses I’m taking are complimentary and overlap in some way. ICM503 is Advanced Visual Aesthetics and deals with DHTML, XML, and using Creative to design web pages, then produce them ‘live’.  ICM506 is Writing for Online Media… another writing class, but one which I’m guessing will focus more on the journalistic bent than the scholarly one. ICM522 Comm Media & Society will be dealing with examining the role of the professional communicator and using scholarly writing in a wiki-based collaborative effort to produce a substantive manuscript… “writing for online media” applied, with the possible journalistic tone replaced by a more scholastic one.  ICM590’s Collaborative Studio works to develop online projects from concept to execution, requiring the writing skills, the collaborative skills, and the Advanced Visual Aesthetics skills.

This clustering of courses could be good, or bad. It’s definitely addressing a core competency for the professional field from several sides.  I’m looking forward to the writing practice and stylistic work. I’m also looking forward to getting back into some kind of a regular schedule.

 Also in search of…

…different employment.  But that’s nothing new.

With all of the collaboration efforts and writing efforts, this is the semester that I’ll be confronting my issues of working with others for grades head-on.

5 days to Spring Semester.

And counting.

Disorganized Resistance? The Warcraft AV ‘boycott’ debate

Okay, I’m a Warcrack geek, but there’s some fascinating flame wars going on there.

For those late to the game, World of WarCraft (WoW) is an online MMORPG in the Fantasy genre with a unique approach: they split the playerbase into two distinct factions, the Alliance and the Horde. Ostensibly, both factions united in the lore of the world’s past, setting aside differences in the face of common enemies, but lately it’s been pretty much all out war between the two sides.  Part of the game experience includes certain ‘mini-games’ that allow groups of Alliance players to confront groups of Horde players. They call these minigames “battlegrounds”, and each one is accessed by signing up in a queue that connects several servers of players together.

Now, while entertainment is certainly a huge part of the concerns of Interactive Communications, there are actually some interesting social dynamics of protest (?) going on right now due to recent changes to the way that one of those player-versus-player (PvP) battlegrounds was scored. Blizzard, the parent company of WoW, is always tweaking and adjusting game balance, trying to maintain a good experience, and they don’t always hit the target well.

Picturesque Alterac Valley

One of the battlegrounds is called Alterac Valley, or AV for short. It is a long and narrow snowy valley with towers, bunkers, graveyards (which act as strategic spawn points for ‘dead’ combatants during the fight) and certain non-player characters for each team. The objective is to take out as many of your opponent’s fortifications while defending your own, racking up honor points until you end the game by taking out the opposing team’s major Boss (the target of the battle and the most powerful NPC in the joint). The point of playing the battlegrounds is to accumulate “honor” points, which can be turned in for in-game rewards and character advancement.

Here’s the deal, though. In a recent set of patched changes introduced by Blizzard (patch 2.3), the way that honor points were scored within AV was completely shifted, with honor awards being completely determined by the number of different strategic points on the map that a group controls when reinforcements run out or when you kill the opposing faction’s Boss.  Over a year’s worth of playing patterns shifted.  Previously, the terrain of the map and the strategy for winning vastly favored the Alliance faction. The game was essentially a race to get to the final boss as quickly as possible and take him out.

New Changes upsetting old strategies 

Now, since 2.3, the strategy of defending and holding various points of the map suddenly came into play. The terrain didn’t change, but now, after 2 years, the terrain and strategy advantage shifted away from the Alliance and favored the Horde. Horde, which had been at a disadvantage which led to frequently losing the battle, suddenly started winning. A lot. What’s worse, because of the way that Horde had been fighting an uphill battle all that time, they seriously began to wipe the board with the Alliance, resulting in near shut-out battlegrounds where the Alliance walked off of the field with, say, 20-60 honor, while the Horde departed with 500-600 honor. (Imagine working all day for a five dollar bill, while the opposition walks away with $5000. Sour grapes is getting close to it.)

Patch 2.3 has been out for a bit now and in at least one of the battlegroups (the collection of different servers who feed into the same battleground queues), Shadowburn, there is a disorganized boycott attempt in progress on the part of the Alliance.

Can it even be called a boycott?

A boycott can be seen as an organized refusal to patronize a business or service as a means to cause the target of the boycott to make some kind of change.  What is happening among the player base in at least the Shadowburn group is that Alliance players are refusing to play Alterac Valley, which means that there are significantly more Horde players in the queue to run an AV battle than there are Alliance. This pushes up the average wait time between signing up for the battleground and actually getting slotted into one. As of last night (1/6/08) the average Shadowburn wait for a go at Alterac Valley for the Horde was in the rough neighborhood of 56 minutes. (Prior to Patch 2.3 changes, AV used to take about 5 minutes in the queue).

When the queue times started rising, there was a rumor which started up that the Alliance was actively boycotting AV to protest the fact that the terrain now favored the Horde. Alliance counter that the Horde has invented the concept of the boycott, and that what is happening is simply self-selection based on rewards and rational logic. After all, if an Alliance player runs AV, chances are they will a) lose, and b) lose with little to nothing to show for the half-hour duration of the battle. Therefore, they say that they are just making choices which don’t include playing AV, but focus on the other battlegrounds offered instead. There’s capture the flag (Warsong Gulch/WG), capture the bases (Arathi Basin/AB), a combined capture the bases so you can capture the flag battleground (Eye of the Storm/EotS) in addition to Alterac Valley, which is ‘capture the bases and kill the bosses’.

Looking in on the discussions

There is a thread on the Warcraft Forums for Shadowburn which actually discuss several of the viewpoints surrounding Alterac Valley.  Horde has glommed on to the concept that this is a boycott, and even when Alliance players post counter arguments (post #33, same thread, page 2) that this is not actually an ‘organized’ phenomenon, the Horde players continue to think of the Alliance playerbase’s -choice- to play something else as an actual boycott or purposeful avoidance.

There are merits to both sides of the argument. On the one hand, Blizzard’s changes have indeed tipped the balance in AV and the Horde now wins more often than not (based solely on my own experiences playing there over and over for a full week between Xmas and New Years… full disclosure, I play as a Horde player, ‘Runika’ from Dark Iron server, part of the Shadowburn battlegroup).  Alliance’s old tactics no longer serve them in the new battleground and their honor rewards are extremely low if the Horde plays well. Still, Alliance -can- win the battleground, and one of the complaints that the Horde players seem to be airing is that the Alliance has given up without even trying to figure out how to play the new battleground.

For myself, my opinion is that the Allies -can- win at the new AV, but it’s a discredit to them that they simply quit instead of trying to figure it out. However, the argument from the Alliance side is that the mechanics of the game actually allowed the Horde to leave with sufficient honor to make it worth their while to play it.

Time for a new word? Choice-cott?

The Alliance is correct about one point of semantics. They are not actively organized to boycott AV, but it is no longer in their best interests to stick it out there. With low returns and a high learning curve, it seems that the game theorists did their math a little skewed on the latest gameplay revision.  The Alliance players aren’t actively trying to avoid AV, but the choices that are available to the individuals has allowed for an effective boycott to be enacted without needing any sort of central organization at all.   And the strategy seems to be effective, if only because Blizzard has made a post promising that unspecified changes are coming to Alterac Valley.

I have to say, it’s interesting to watch all of this unfold around me. The power of individual choice on a massive scale, the misinterpretation of motives surrounding online actions and results, the application of game theory, and the emerging dynamic between the company Blizzard itself and its players.  For a while the forums just seemed like a flamefest, a breeding ground for trolls, but it’s curious to see which problems get addressed, and which do not.

The World of World of Warcraft

There are several interesting tidbits and currents at play surrounding this game. For example, there is an assumption among the Horde that Horde players tend to be older, independent-minded, and more mature in general than the Alliance. To the Alliance are consigned the imagined cesspool of younger players and naive players, not just because of the Horde/Alliance split, but because it appears to bear out. Not that the Alliance doesn’t have great players, they do, but they are blamed for harboring the “emo kids” (emo is hard to explain, and deserves a whole ‘nother post. Along with QQ, pwn, mohawk, and chuck norris).

I have to admit my own frustration with the Alliance. I can totally see them in my mind as being spoiled younger kids in the next generation(s) who hit upon a challenge with the changes to AV and chose to quit instead of pushing forwards. Well, assumptions are everywhere.  It would be interesting to figure out how to collect this kind of data somehow to quantitatively prove that the Alliance are n00bs.

Until then… we’ll just have to wait and see how AV ends up. In the meanwhile, watching the flame wars and post wars on the forums is a fascinating way to pass the time. After all, I’ve got almost an hour between running AV now. Might as well put it to good use.

Methods courses lacking at Quinnipiac

All right, I’ve finally found a deficiency in Quinnipiac’s program. Methods courses are notoriously lacking,  not just from the Interactive Communications Masters, but also from every other program on campus.  I had to look to other universities in the area to find any hope of getting that preparation for the possibility of pursuing doctoral work.

From what I can gather, Methods coursework focuses on how to do research and how to collect, analyze and interpret (perhaps manipulate would be a better word?) statistical data. The meat and bones of research. Setting up experiments, focusing on data gathering methodologies, etc. In other words, the bread and butter of doctoral work. Great ideas are one thing, but methodology is how you put the science back into what is otherwise a wonderful bit of daydream philosophizing.

Now that I’m aware of  that, it adds another level for consideration before making a final decision to pursue the PhD at this time or not.

Why doesn’t QU offer research methods and statistical training?

Don’t get me wrong. I *love* the QU program. In fact, this is the first real academic failing I’ve been able to find in their program. I’m guessing that the reason that QU has decided not to offer much in the way of Methods coursework is because the program is aimed more at the professional/craft side of Interactive Communications. QU seems to be aiming to produce the best business leaders and those who will apply the knowledge gained in the Master’s program to raise the overall level of professional thinking and strategy within the field of Interactive Communications, however that applies to any of the various sub-disciplines that get covered by that umbrella.

I counter that consideration by pointing out that some of the highest paid professional positions within the realm of advertising (just one sub-field touched by ICM) are the marketing researchers, even those who haven’t earned more than a MS themselves. Offering at least one Methods class would do two very important things for the QU program: it would present students with a fundamental understanding of research and communicating with researchers intelligently (a very important skill for senior management), and it would also give the Master’s students a taste of the kind of discipline and work which seem to make up the foundation of doctoral-level  work.

A strange reversal

Interestingly enough, it feels to me at this point that the Master’s, such as I’m experiencing it at QU, is aimed more at the philosophy and theory of the field and less about the science of it. In fact, I’m ashamed to say that while I recall being lectured once in Anthro classes in my undergraduate coursework, I couldn’t delineate the steps in the scientific method to save my life right now. I also vaguely recall that there was an inordinate amount of class discussion that day about the difference between a theory and an hypothesis. (If I recall correctly, the theory is the overarching idea, the hypothesis is a statement derived from the theory which can be proven or disproven.)

So while the doctoral degree is a Doctor of Philosophy, it certainly feels more like the Master’s degree is where theories get bandied about quite a lot. Of course, we’re also just stepping up to study the dialog of the invisible college which is already in progress, so I’m sure that at the doctoral level there’s a -lot- more theorizing. Just that we’ve got to get through the research methods process first.

Undergraduate Statistics memories

I remember that I took statistics 101 in my second semester Freshman year. 1990. I was carrying 18 credit hours and pledging a fraternity, too. It was a 9 am class, the last one I took in my undergraduate career. (Not kidding. Earliest classes were 10am for me). I missed one class at the end of the week prior, and stumbled in after a pledge function with bleary eyes and a hangover for the following class the next week. I sat in the room and watched as the muffled-voice stoop-shouldered psych professor came in and started the lecture on Stats.  He picked up the chalk and checked his notes, then proceeded to begin filling up the blackboard with all sorts of arcane mathematical symbols. He spoke rapidly but quietly and talked directly into the blackboard without turning around.

I was lost. I was more than lost. I was hopelessly lost and didn’t know where to start. Shit! Guess I had picked the wrong day to miss classes the week prior. I started furiously copying the material on the board, material that never ended. On and on he droned, and all of the students just sat there copying as quickly as possible. All of us. Minute by minute, the boards filled up. One blackboard full. Two. Three. Erase the first one line by line and replace  them with more formulas. At various intervals, the professor’s arm would shoot out and he would stab pointedly at a formula somewhere else on the board, and he never paused for a breath.

Five minutes before the end of class, with pages of notes and absolutely NO CLUE what I had just sat through, the Professor turned around, smiled at one of the girls in class, and asked with surprise, “Darla, what are you doing in my Stats 400 class?”

He had mixed up his notebooks. We all just sat there, equally dumbfounded, then he just laughed and said, “Well, read the next chapter and show up to class on Thursday.”

I never went back. I just read along from time to time, did the work out of the textbook and showed up for the tests. I got a 2.5 for the class and counted it as a job well done.

Hopefully this time it’ll be with a better professor.