Michael's Journal

10:51am: Worst Road System In Massachusetts
I made a post to Facebook yesterday saying that Chicopee was the worst road system in the commonwealth. Of course, this was inspired by having a great deal of trouble finding a road which was only two turns off of Memorial Drive. The correct way to get there was to go down the road that said "Dead End" then turn right. (Dead End means no side roads, by the way)

In the comments, people offered a few other nominations for worst roads in the commonwealth. Salem/Danvers/Peabody and Holyoke were suggested. Fitchburg and Boston are also worth mentioning.

Salem and area certainly makes a good effort at being worst roads in the state. There are many narrow, one way streets, which can make it somewhat difficult to get to places on back roads. On other hand, the system of main roads is pretty easy to navigate. I have also found that parking is relatively easy to find. It also helps that the system of main roads in that area is fairly straight forward. Most of the main roads are pretty straight or at least well signed.

Holyoke doesn't make a very good effort to get the worst roads prize. Holyoke was one of the first planned cities in America, so it is laid out on an easy to follow grid system. The comment offered that one way streets through bad neighborhoods was panic inducing. I have spent quite a bit of time in Holyoke. I have been through most of the neighborhoods and have never had any trouble. There are gangs in Holyoke, but they mostly leave outsiders alone. So, since the roads themselves are actually pretty easy to navigate, Holyoke is not in the running.

Fitchburg can be tricky to get around, especially because it is not near the highway. The only way in and out is through a series of convoluted secondary roads. The roads look like a pile of Pick-Up Sticks, with numerous 150 degree turns.

Boston, of course, is very hard to get around, but the roads are mostly somewhat grid like and one is usually able to follow the main roads. There are also large landmarks that one can use to navigate.

As for Chicopee, I have been lost in Chicopee many many times. Many of these times I have had a map in my hand at the time and have not been able to translate what I see on the map into what is going on on the roads. Intersections are slightly offset so that what looks like it should be straight is actually a turn. Even the main roads, with the exception of Memorial Drive, are very difficult to follow. Through streets are marked as dead ends while dead ends are not marked at all.

But here is the kicker that puts Chicopee over the top. Numbered routes are not marked properly. The purpose of numbered routes is to allow people to travel longer distances without complex directions (e.g. 116N->47N->63N->2W->128N->114S takes you to Salem, 100 miles away), but this only works if there are signs telling you how to follow the routes. Route 141 in Chicopee takes a turn at an intersection where you can go right, left, or straight, and there is not a sign in sight.

Thus, after years of travel, I consider Chicopee to have the worst road system in Massachusetts.

9:21am: NexusCorp Wants You
There are three awesome events coming up this Fall: MaulCon II, Zombie Nexus, and SciFact. These events do not run themselves, and we need your help to make them happen.

MaulCon II September 25-27, 2009 Hampshire Maul

In the Hampshire Mall, there is a large and empty storefront. When looking for a place to host a game convention, I realized that it would be an awesome place to game, as it looks like the kind of place you would hide from zombies after the apocalypse. It's also awesome because it is right next to a food court, a game store, and anything else you might need to buy during a game con.

MaulCon I got 45 attendees, and we are hoping to double that for the second one. Our main strategy for doing so is not scheduling it during a school break. Additionally, we will be working with the great folks at JiffyCon to bring a full indie game track to MaulCon, making MaulCon bigger and better and exposing the awesomeness that is indie games to a wider audience.

In terms of volunteers MaulCon needs...
GMs
GMs recruiters
Registration Staff
Publicity
A Vendor Liaison
Food Zombies
and more

Furthermore, you can make a few bucks by selling registrations for us online. Just click the link below to set yourself through Eventbee as an affiliate. You will get $2 for each $10 pre-reg purchased through you. Pretty good wages for one little link.

---

Zombie Nexus
Saturday, October 25th, 2009
UMass Campus Center Auditorium

When the zombie apocalypse comes, preparation will make the difference between survival and being the main course in a zombie buffet. At NexusCorp, we take the safety of the community very seriously, and that is why we are organizing Zombie Nexus, to provide you of the community the knowledge that you will need to survive long enough to repopulate the Earth after zombies destroy civiliation as we know it.

Zombie Nexus will feature workshops on survival techniques, discussions on zombie films and literature, and artists. Zombie Nexus will have make up artists who can teach you to convincingly dress like a zombie, allowing you to safely hide in a crowd of brain-hungry undead. Zombie related role playing and board games will be played to advance your training in theoretical zombie survival techniques.

We are also working on getting an author or two, but, as they all live in the woods surrounded by survival supplies and shotguns, we are having a little trouble reaching them.

Zombie Nexus needs the following staff and participation...
Registration
Vendor Liaison
Presenter Coordinator
Publicity
Ops Coordinator
Presenters/performers (zombie survival, HvZ, and anything else of zombie interest)
and more

The affiliate program is also available for this event, but the reg rate cannot be set until we confirm the special guests. The commission rate will be $1-$4 per attendee.

---

SciFact
November, Date TBD
Location TBD

Cutting edge science. Developments in the world of knowledge. That's what SciFact is about. Modeled on a sci-fi convention, SciFact is an event where people involved in or at knowledgeable about the world of science and technology will present on various hard science topics in a way that is accessible to common science geeks.

We are still working on finding a proper affordable venue for the event, but we are aiming to having it in mid-November.

In addition to the panels, there are also plans to get some science related entertainment for Friday and Saturday evenings of the event: perhaps science related filkers, games, improv or some such.

SciFact needs the following staff and participants...
Presenter Recruitment, Scheduling, and Wrangling
Publicity
Registration
Presenters (anyone who is wise the in the ways of science)
and more

Affiliate program also available.

8:29am: Michael Jackson and the News of the Day
There are two ways that one can think of Michael Jackson. He can be a pedophile who can sing, or he can be a musical pioneer who had some issue with kids when got older and went the rest of the way off the deep end. In some ways, it is unfortunate that he did not die years earlier. Had he, he would only be remembered for the way in which he changed music, and specifically how he changed music videos.

On Jamin' 94.5 yesterday, they were talking about him and pointed out that most musicians performing today are in some way influenced by Michael Jackson. Thriller was the first video that was really cinematic, and many have followed that innovation.

In his later years, he did go quite a ways off the deep end. This likely has something to do with the fact that he never had a childhood. He was performing nationally from the time he was 5. His parents actually gave him hormones to keep his voice from changing and thus lose them their golden goose. This is not a recipe for a stable individual. In spite of this, he was able to do great things in music.

We don't really know what happened in later years at his ranch. Indeed he did enjoy the company of children, but this could be because of the loss of his own childhood. Was there a sexual element to it? We don't know. We do know that some people realized that they had something that looked questionable involving a man with a great deal of money and they thought they might have the chance to get at some of that money.


I have also been following the story of Mark Sanford and the continuing collapse of the Republican party. Perhaps they would do well to invest in some meditation or hypnotherapy or at least some porn. The party is literally fucking itself off the stage of power and respectability. Of course, I don't so much take issue with extramarital activities, but I do take issue with these activities being conducted in secret and destroying families, and I especially take issue with them being conducted by men who proclaim their family values from the highest mountain tops.

If only it were not for gay marriage, these various philandering Republicans might have been able to keep it in their pants.

Reminds me of a bumper sticker: "Worry about your own damned family."

9:49pm: Worlds Apart Board Game League


The much awaited Worlds Apart Games Board Game League has begun. Participation is free, and players have the chance to win a portion of $100 in prizes to the store!

The League is will run through Sunday, August 16th when we shall wrap up with a final tournament!

You may join at any time, but the sooner you start, the sooner you can start earning league points.

Don't worry if you are not very experienced with board games. You get points for every game you play, so you can make up for a lack of practice with enthusiasm and tenacity.

9:46am: Fish in the Water
Having not posted in a little while, I feel like now is the time.

Working many many hours a week for the past couple months has made me realize something. For a while, I was thinking that I was not making the money I was hoping to make because I lacked clients. In June I hit the point where I had enough clients that I was booking out 3.5 weeks. I was full to the gills with clients. Then I hit the next wall, time in the week.

Part of the problem here is that all of my clients are east of Worcester, so I have to spend two hours in the morning and two hours in the evening traveling back and forth. Of course, I am not paid for this time. This, I had many many days where I would be up around dawn and not get back until 10 PM. All this for a $550 paycheck every week.

When I was hired, I was told that I would work with the clients in western mass. The important detail that was left out was that there weren't any. It's not that there are not disabled people in the area. It's that my father has never gotten out here to really develop the business. Some people have told me that I should take the time to go out and do that, but my reservation is that I don't get paid for anything I do that is not actual teaching of lessons. This means that I'd be doing sales for free. That seems like a bum deal to me.

As such, I have started more actively looking into other employment. Learning my lesson from the past, I am still teaching full time while I look. I am still trying to get into event planning. I'm running many of my own events over the next 12 months. The theory here is that I will run those events well and people will see it and say "that event was great, I want you to run one for me."

I'm looking into running speed dating events. I've got all the elements planned out except that I need to figure out how to make software to organize the results. You see, I know how to program in PHP/SQL, but that's web based. I don't know any local-based platforms to make software which would run locally to run the number crunching. I can do it manually, but computers are good for this kind of thing if one know's how to do it. Anyone have thoughts on this one?


I have been spending this weekend at the Taste of Amherst. Worlds Apart Games has a tent there where we are letting people play board games for free to promote the store. It's been pretty good, and there have been a few people who did not know about the store before who now do. It's not been a huge coup, but it didn't cost us anything either. It's also nice to be working on something for the weekend. Last weekend I was at Silver Kingdoms Ren Faire. Both weekends left me feeling much more relaxed than I came in.

I am very social, and my job forces me to be alone, in the car for most of the day. The people I do see are not part of my community, being in eastern Mass. Going to SKRF and the Taste give me the chance to re-immerse in various parts of my community. I am much more comfortable swimming in waters with other fish.

8:51am: Show Love

Get your own CrushTag!

10:04am: Lucid Awakening
Erin made a great comment on my post from yesterday morning, and I think that she is, as she often is, correct. She said that breaking up when we did was not a mistake since we were both miserable. Things could possibly have been fixed, but that would mean that we would have to have been working on fixing things for many months and fixing things was not an option for a certain reason (which in short was my own foolishness, but in long was more complex).

Erin does seem to be doing pretty well. She and Lucky may have always been a better match. They seem to have closer matching styles. This got me thinking as to how my ex's have turned out. So, let's consider each of my major relationships and how their very next relationship turned out:

Ebie - married
Katy - unknown
Amanda - married
Abigail - with him for many many years (sketchy details, since she doesn't talk to me)
Erin - strong, long term live-in SO
Fizzy - live-in SO who bought a house for her to live in with him
Jen - no SO, but got kick ass internship

So, it seems that dating and then breaking up with me is an excellent good luck charm. It's like Good Luck Chuck, but it takes much longer to make the magic take effect. This does not bother me at all, as I would much rather that those I have been with go on to success and happiness. I like for things to turn out well for people, especially those that I once cared about. It means that I don't have any of those exes whose life fell apart after leaving me, which is good.

In more objective moments, I can say that things are not going too poorly. Sure, I'm not thrilled with my job, but it's not all that much more demanding than any other and it does pay pretty well, so I can't complain too much about that. Someone to come home to at night would be nice, but it's not like I'm so old that I've missed my chance. (It's not like I'm 30 or something. Geeze, that'll be old!) I'm on an exit ramp of life. Not much interesting here, but if I just follow it through, I will find myself on the next exciting highway soon.

12:17am: Free Chocolate Day
Female Gamer Appreciation Month continues with free, tasty fudge!

Sunday, May 24th, Worlds Apart is proud to host Free Chocolate Day.

Female Gamer Appreciation Month is Worlds Apart's tribute to gamers of the fairer sex. All month, we are giving women a 10% discount and other benefits. Additionally, there is a great lineup of events, including this one.

The chocolate will come out at 2:00 PM and stay until it all gets eaten. Bring a board game to share or play one of our over 110 demo games while you enjoy the tasty tasty fudge.

Worlds Apart is located in downtown Amherst, under the new Papa Gino's Pronto next to the Amherst Brewing Company.

All are welcome.

10:40pm: Regrets and Thoughts
That LJ-meme I just posted I got from various people, and I have gotten some interesting responses which I'd like to share with you.

One person asked "Any regrets?"

Short answer: yes, many.
The seven years since I left UMass have been very eventful, and I learned a great deal. I also made many mistakes. I never quite got to where I was trying to go, but starting in 2007, it all started to tumble away. In many ways things are good now. I am making decent money. Much of this money is going to pay off debts from the past, but that's better than not paying off debts. I have NexusCorp and the great events that are coming from it as well as the wonderful people I get to work with on those events. Yet, there was an unspoiled quality to life before everything came apart. Even when there were problems, I still believed that all things were possible.

What specifically do I regret?

I regret that my conflict with Angela in the Come Again Players informed the way the cast would function on down the line, creating a politically charged and confrontational environment rather that one where everyone can work together.

I regret that I handled the transition of Phoenix to a co-op so poorly and that I burned so many bridges and relationships in the process.

I regret losing Erin. I'll never know if leaving was the right choice or not. Maybe things could have been fixed and maybe they could not have been, but there are often times when I miss what we had, or at least had the potential to have.

I regret leaving Pi-Con as I did. I was a good chair and the staff was a good staff, but we were not good together. However, it would have been better to finish out a year and then hand it off rather than leaving midyear. It was a bad choice any way you look at it.

I regret losing my temper with the cast in February, resulting in my current banned state from the theater. I would like to revisit the old cast and enjoy the show as an audience member which I could never do before. Unfortunately, now that I am ready to return as a supportive fan, I am not allowed to.

I also regret putting Italian sausage in the casserole I made tonight. It's too strong a flavor and makes it generally feel too heavy.

Another, in answer to "tell me a memory about you" says this:
you were always wicked nice and appreciative of new audience members/ groupies and that helped me (us, really) build a connection with the cast.

I was, indeed, very nice. Part of this was political. Popularity is power. Part of it was that I liked to flirt with attractive women. I once believed that my outgoing nature made people feel welcome and part of things, but then the idea started to get around that I was "sketchy". Anonymous women had been made to feel uncomfortable by my attentions and never returned, making my creepiness a liability to the cast.

The person who said this has always been friendly to me, and I have never had a reason to think that she had a problem with me. However, back in the day when she first became an audience member, I had quite a crush on her, and she got a considerable amount of my attentions. When the accusation started, I got the idea, because I was told explicitly or because I intuited it implicitly, that she was one of those who was creeped out. Of course, she was not creeped enough to leave, and she eventually joined the cast, but creeped out is creeped out. No one likes to hear that they make people uncomfortable.

Seeing this comment was a great relief to me. I am glad to hear from at least one person that my friendliness was received in the positive light that it was intended.


Now that these things are in the past, people seem to feel willing to think better of me. Perhaps they felt that they needed to keep putting me down to keep my massive and uncontrollable ego in check. Now that I have relinquished my plans for world domination, they can treat me like a person again... or something like that.

10:40pm: 1. Tell you why I friended you.
2. Associate you with something - fandom, a song, a color, a photo, a word etc.
3. Tell you something I like about you.
4. Tell you a memory I have of you.
5. Ask something I've always wanted to know about you.
6. Tell you my favorite user pic of yours.
7. In return, you must post this in your LJ.

3:19pm: My Little Pony Movie Spoof Trailer
What if every little girl's dream became mankind's worst nightmare?

12:25am: Anyone Out East Free Monday Night?
I have a client out in Salem who has a road test coming up. This means that I need to make a special trip out there tomorrow afternoon to give her a final lesson, which means that I will be in eastern MA around 6:00. Anyone out there want to hang out tonight (Monday night)?

If you are around, give me a call at 413-218-7946.

4:07pm: CF Walk
I will be walking in the CF Walk on May 17th. The walk is to raise money for the Cystic Fibrosis Foundation, an organization dedicated to eliminating Cystic Fibrosis, the disease that took our good friend Nick from us in October.

If you would like to donate, click the link below. Even a couple dollars is helpful.

http://www.cff.org/Great_Strides/MichaelWhitehouse

3:31pm: Found This on Facebook
Facebook has been having some issues with applications lately. This is what Superpoke gives you if it gets an error:

10:37am: Loss of Traction
I have been a bit off my game lately. Part of it may have to do with how many hours I am working making me out of touch with things, since when I work it makes me come home less nights. This coming week, I'll be away four nights. I have projects that I am working on, and they are quite interesting, but I'm just not at the level of energy that I like to be.

I suspect I know what is distracting me from charging down the road, but I can't really go into it in a public forum here.

The good news is that me off my game is about as productive as an average person on a good day, so I'm not exactly falling behind. It's like driving a sports car in second gear. The thing that provides income does not require motivation, so the money will still roll in to pay off debts and fund new events.

I think that part of the issue is that I'm reaching a place in life where I want to achieve some kind of stability. A comfortable place to live, a reliable job that does not fling me around the state, a family perhaps. While I think I am on a good path, it doesn't seem to be moving to that place, and I am not sure how to move it that way.


In totally unrelated news...

I am starting a new RPG run which should be very interesting. It's D6 Space, and I am calling it Fading Republic. It will be semi-episodic, so players who cannot commit to being there every week can jump in and out, but I am looking for core players who will be there every week as well.

The basic premise is that there is a Republic which rules all of mankind across the galaxy known as the United Republic. The Republic is good and just and democratic. All people have basic human rights and the protections of the greatest, most powerful, most complex government ever known to man. Yet, for some reason, some deviants and radicals on outlying planets would rather disrupt the proper order of things rather than share in the prosperity of peace.

As a Civilian Response Management Team (CRMT or Civrampt), your job is to coordinate military and civil forces at your fingertips to maintain peace, order, and prosperity. You may be called in to deal with anything from piracy to famine to insurrection. While you are civilians, you have at your disposal the full resources of a Battle Cruiser and two Destroyers, a power nearly unmatched in the galaxy. The Republic entrusts you to use these resources wisely to protect innocent life and proper order.

To play as a regular character, you must produce three pages of background information. The galaxy is only partially defined, meaning that your background story will help to create the universe in which you will game. If you are interested in playing a regular character, please contact me for more game details.

The first session will be 7:00 PM, Friday May 15th at Worlds.

6:12am: Artist Wanted
I am need of an artist who can draw hands. I am involved in an anti-domestic violence and sexual violence campaign and a logo is needed which involves a hand catching a fist. As I am no artist, I must appeal to you, the LJ public, for this. The campaign pretty much just waits on this logo before it can launch. Any takers?

6:02am: Hillarious!
Obama's First 100 Days, Facebook Style

2:49pm: Z-Con gets the repo treatment
So, it would seem that there actually is a RepoCon in the works and that Darren Bousman is actually involved in the planning of it. It seems it will be in early November of this year. That somewhat preempts Z-Con. That's alright, I have plenty of things to fill my plate right now as it is.

MaulCon, Zombie Nexus, and, of course, Nexus Faire are plenty to keep NexusCorp busy for now. There are a few other things I'm kicking around like Geek Prom and Sci-Nexus, but I can take my time making those happen. I figure that it is wise to ramp up the event planning process in a steady but careful way, building up resources over a series of successful events before leaping into the big ones like Z-Con or Sci-Nexus.

The concept of Z-Con may still be kept on a shelf. The idea of it was originally to be not just Repo, but active movie fandom in general, such as Repo, Rocky, Buffy, Dr Horrible, etc. However, if I do pursue this, I'll probably wait until at least 2011, to let things settle out a bit before jumping into it.


In other news, I am still buried in post con work from Nexus Faire. I have been working the paycheck way many hours this week. This is good because many hours means fat paychecks, and fat paychecks means that I can pay off Nexus Faire I, put down the deposit for Nexus Faire II, and pay the deposit for Zombie Nexus.

Today is the Alara Reborn pre-release at Worlds Apart. We have 21 people here which is pretty good. I have the bye in the first round, which is why I am on the computer and not playing. Tomorrow, I will be joining a lovely midget who is not actually a midget for dinner, and the rest of the week will be spent working, working, and working. I might actually get my first 4-figure paycheck for this coming week if things go well.


In case you are wondering, the upcoming NexusCorp dates are:
September 25-27, 2009 - MaulCon II
October 24, 2009 - Zombie Nexus
April 16-18, 2010 - Nexus Faire II

10:42pm: Z-Con Date Survey
I have set up a survey for the date for Z-Con. It is very important that I get good data on what date is good because the date is critical for a successful event. Please take the survey and share the link with other people you know who are interested in Repo.

Click Here to take survey

11:40pm: Z-Con Date?
I have a tentative date for Z-Con. I think it's a good date, but I want to make sure it's not conflicting with anything terribly important. The date is...

November 19-21, 2010

Selected for the best of reasons... November is one of the cheapest times of a the year to get space, and that weekend is the cheapest weekend in November leaving more money for more awesome.

So, am I forgetting some terribly important conflict on that date?

9:44am: Five Steps to Misery
Hilarious!

12:08pm: Chopsticks?
I saw this ad on Facebook. I'm not sure what they were trying to say, but it looks like they are advertising chopsticks as reliable birth control.

12:58am: Morally Unambiguous Comics

12:43am: So much for that idea
Pirates actually Somalis defending their home against fish poaching and nuclear waste dumping

8:32pm: Fighting the Good Fight
I, for one, have been following the story of the Maersk Alabama with great interest. First, it's an awesome story. American cargo ship attacked by pirates. The crew comes together to repel the pirates and the captain surrenders himself as a hostage to save his crew.

More than that, it's a rare example of American might being used in way which is undeniably good. There's no moral ambiguity here. The good guys beat the bad guys. (Yes, the bad guys are doing what they are doing because of extreme poverty, but we did our best to help with that as well.)

So, let's look at this story. First, we have an American flagged ship carrying a load of emergency food and supplies for starving Kenyans. The ship is attacked by pirates, which they manage to maneuver and avoid for 17 minutes. The pirates finally board the ship, and the crew manages to, by force and guile, repel the pirates. The captain surrenders himself to save the rest of his crew. Then, the highly trained Navy SEAL sharpshooters take down the pirates when they threaten the captain.

Oh, and did I mention that the destroyer which was on scene was named after a captain who was captured by and later fought the Barberry Pirates?

It's like a Tom Clancy novel except tidier.