Personal – Page 7 – The Designer Monologues

January 1, 2016January 1, 2016

Bring it on, 2016…

Not a long post this year, folks — I’ve got too much work to do.

Those of you who have been paying attention will know that 2015, like 2014 before it, was a bastard of a year for me. The past couple of years have been a one-two-gut-punch of troubles — professional, personal, familial, financial and emotional.

In my estimation, two in a row is enough. You’re on notice, 2016. It would not be wise for you to disappoint me.

First order of business: Get the epically-late FAR WEST done and out the door. Doing that will lift a large weight of stress, and, I hope, make some progress towards earning back some of the goodwill from gamers that I’ve pissed away since late 2011.

Got some other irons in the fire from Adamant as well — I’m working with some brilliant folks — but none of that even gets talked about until FAR WEST is out. Suffice to say: I think you’ll like what you see.

Here’s hoping for a better year — for me, for you, for everyone. I think we’ve earned it.

March 27, 2015March 27, 2015

Saying No to Indiana

As I’m sure most of you know by now, Indiana Governor Mike Pence signed his state’s so-called “Religious Freedom” bill into law, a transparent backlash against the growing tide of marriage equality. It is, bluntly, a “right to discriminate based on my bronze-age superstitions, because Invisible Sky Pixie sez so” law. Here’s a dead give-away — if this law was so God-Bless-America AWESOME, the signing ceremony wouldn’t have been held in private.

Many businesses have come out against this latest overreach from the American Taliban — including GenCon, the largest convention in my industry. Now that the law has been enacted, GenCon has said that it will effect their decision to remain in Indianapolis after their current contract ends in 2020.

I don’t have a contract until 2020. I can decide to stay away from Indiana right now. I was not going to attend GenCon as an exhibitor this year (I no longer have shared space in a booth, and the waiting list for new exhibitors is too long), but I was planning on flying in and having meetings, talk with colleagues, & line up freelance work (both as a freelancer and a publisher). I cannot, in good conscience, do that now.

It’s bad enough that my tax dollars go to support the benighted ignorance of Kansas, the state where I currently reside. But I have more of a choice in where I travel for business. Indiana isn’t getting any money from me.

I know I’m not a big deal. My presence or absence will be noted by few. For me, though, it’s about drawing a line.

I see friends and colleagues struggling with whether or not to attend — and those who are attending say that we shouldn’t penalize GenCon, or the folks in Indianapolis who don’t support this law. That we should attend anyway, and show our support for those people, and maybe engage in protest while we’re there.

I’m sorry, but that doesn’t work. The only way things will change is if we don’t go, and we make it clear why.

For boycotts to have any impact, they need to be stark, immediate, brutal and unflinching — even if it ends up isolating the folks in the state who don’t support the law. The only way this gets overturned is if there’s massive economic damage.

For me, “I’m still going, to offer support/protest” veers just a bit too close to coming up with excuses to keep doing something I like, because I like it. I recognize that tendency within myself, and I’m not comfortable with it. Boycotts are not supposed to be comfortable or easy — otherwise they’d have no meaning. They should be a sacrifice on the part of the boycotter.

My fear is that enough people will end up coming up with reasons WHY they should just go ahead and attend that it will undercut the effectiveness of any boycott attempt, especially given the depressingly large percentage of gamers who have expressed support for this law, or bemoaned that gaming “should stay out of politics.”

You see, they’re ALREADY going.

And if you go, you’re counted with them, regardless of your intentions.

You’re a turnstile number in attendance, money going into the economy, and part of the reason why those that enacted this law will say “see? it was all nothing in the end.” Other states will look at that, and be more likely to press ahead with their own laws, knowing that there will be no real blowback.

I can’t be a part of that. I hope you can’t, either.

February 4, 2015

Cord-Cutting And Consolidating

Well, it’s official. As of yesterday, the Skarka household has joined the growing ranks of the nation’s cord-cutters, canceling our cable bundle and switching over to broadband internet only. This was done as part of an overall consolidation of services, after I looked at what we had and realized that I was spending quite a lot of money, out of what basically amounted to mere habit. When I examined our actual patterns of use, it became clear that we could make some changes and save a considerable amount.

The first step was our mobile plan. I had been grandfathered in to AT&T’s unlimited data plan, and it was for that reason that I was reluctant to change our overall plan (because of course, if you change your plan, the grandfathering is removed, and you use the unlimited data). Once I actually took a look at our data usage, though, I discovered that across all the devices in our plan, during our heaviest months, we barely used 8GB — and our monthly average was closer to 4. So, goodbye unlimited data! I was able to switch us to a shared data family plan at 15GB/month (still almost double what we used during our highest usage) and upgrade every device, for a monthly bill that’s almost $100/month cheaper.

Thinking about phones got me thinking about our landline, which we had bundled with our cable and internet. Since we primarily use our mobiles, the landline was really just there to act as a telemarketer spam-trap. I had thought about killing it before, but under the old owners of our local cable company, if I cancelled the phone, the remaining cable and internet bundle was actually MORE expensive (Charming, eh?). However, our cable company had changed hands TWICE since then (local company sold to out-of-town corporation, who was then bought by another). Digging into the new plan info, I found out that the up-charge was no longer in place. Which got me thinking about dropping EVERYTHING but internet.

Laura and I watch a ton of stuff via Netflix and Amazon Prime, as well as other online sources. What little broadcast TV we do watch is all carried by Hulu Plus (which we didn’t have a subscription for — but I have since added). There just didn’t seem to be a compelling reason to keep paying a ton of money every month for a phone we don’t use and channels we don’t watch. (The fact that the cable company dropped 8 channels as of January 1st — including BBC America — yet our bill was going to go UP by almost $20 certainly factored into our decision).

So, we dumped cable and the land-line, and kept our 50mbs internet connection… and I discovered that they now offer a 110mbs service (Google Fiber is available just down the road in KC, and so they want to compete, I guess) — and the 110mbs is only going to be $15 a month more than the 50mbs. So yeah, we’re on that.

This cut our cable bull by almost $200. Even adding in the Hulu Plus subscription ($8), it was a no-brainer.

The only drawback is my beloved footy — For local Sporting KC matches, we can always go down and watch in our local pub, or drop a one-time expendature of $70 and get a 50-mile-rated indoor digital antenna to watch over-the-air broadcasts. We’re out of luck for English Premiere League matches, though — unless I can find some less-than-legal online streaming, which I currently have no source for (my preferred site closed on the 1st of the year).

But the benefit is obvious:

Old Phone Plan to New Phone Plan: $100 a month cheaper.
Dumping Landline and Cable: $200 a month cheaper.

Even adding in a new $8/month Hulu subscription, and a possible $70 purchase of an antenna in the next month or so, it’s still going to end up saving us $3400 this year alone.

Not too shabby.