Sean Middleditch

My lease is up in a few months, and combined with some general life-style differences with my roommate (who is not a bad guy in general, we just have some vastly different habits), I’ve decided it’s time to start looking for a new place to live.

I’ve decided to try moving out on my own, which will be a first for me. I lived with my parents, then with a roommate, so having a place all to myself will be quite new. I have a feeling I will get massively bored very quickly.

Granted, the apartment I’m currently aiming for is also in the middle of Eastern Michigan University campus, and we’ve already met a number of attractive young ladies around my age living in the area, so maybe I won’t be _that_ bored. :)

The real kicker though is going to be rent and utilities. My current apartment is only $550/month, and I only pay half of that. I also only pay half of the utilities and Internet access. Anyone who’s done a move-out knows that reducing the number of people living in an apartment does not result in an equivalent reduction in utility costs, either. When I moved out of my parents’ house, their utilities bills actually went up - you’d figure the removal of 3-4 computers would have brought a signficant drop.

So, I’m looking to be spending some $550-$650 per month in rent, plus around $100/month in utilities, plus another $30-$50 in Internet access, plus I won’t be able to bum groceries off my roommate anymore. This is going to get expensive, quick. I’m going to need to work on my finance management quite a bit, if this year is any indication.

Being self-employed (although I’m really only working for one guy, I do so as a sub-contractor, not an actual employee) I have to pay the employer’s share of taxes, as well as find my own health care, and I don’t get any 401k or anything. This year I made $14k more than last year. However, for the last two years running, I managed to increase my total savings and stocks by $6k and $4k, but this year I managed to increase it only by a grand total of $361.00, and I’m actually going to be short in my taxes fund come Winter tax time, so that’ll turn to a negative in about a month. I am somewhat boggled as to how I managed to spend around $18k more this year than last year. I mean, a few years of that kind of money saved could buy me a decent house. In cash.

Somewhere in the back of my head I know where all the money went, but trying to put it into a list of things I can cut is being rather challenging. Rent and groceries ate up about $6k of it. The trip to Japan last Spring ate up another $2k. The damn Wii and Wii games probably took up another $1k, and movies and books ate up another $2k. The rest probably went to eating out so often, since I only know how to cook one meal and, while it is my favorite, it’s not something I really want to eat every day, or even every week for that matter.

So, for the upcoming year, aside from finding more/better work, I need to cut back my spending. And that’s after taking into account the fact I’ll be paying more than twice in rent and utilities soon. I need to start cooking at home more often, that’s way cheaper than eating out at expensive restaurants every morning, lunch, and dinner. That should be relatively easy to start doing. I need to spend less on entertainment, which I guess I could replace by getting involved in Open Source stuff again, or maybe just hanging out with people more often doing things that don’t require buying stuff. Maybe I could stop bitching about FLOSS software issues and start working on it more often again. (I started writing a patch for PCRE for a bug I filed, but of course I picked something that requires extensive internal changes to the system, and isn’t really a best first patch for someone who’s never worked on the codebase before - why do I always bite off more than I can chew? Oh well, at least I’m learning how PCRE works very, very quickly.) I’m planning another overseas trip, so that expensive will be back, but this time I can hopefully not spend nearly as much.

Unfortunately, looking at it, all of the “low hanging fruit” in my budget is going to add up to about the same amount as the additional rent and utilities I’m going to be paying. At best, unless I start making more money, I’m going to be stuck at the end of next year with no additional cash in savings. And that won’t work for me - I really wanted to have enough for a down payment on a house by this time, but I missed that mark by about $5k. Which I could have easily saved up in 10 months in years prior. :/

Making more money is something that should be easy, even in my current job. I just have to work more hours. They’re available to me. I just… well, as yesterday’s whine-fest indicated, working more hours at that job is likely going to lead to brain hemmhorging or something. I need to start pulling in additional jobs, or get one of the half-dozen “cool idea” projects I have off the ground. Sadly, most of those projects involve needing a lot of help. My roommate has a very nifty idea that could easily be making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, but we need artists (our last one spontaneously joined the navy without telling us), and we need time to get this up and running - it’s going to be a massive web (ugh) project. Nothing nearly as complicated as the work we’ve done in the past, and totally within our abilities, but still something that will take a month or two of non-paid dedicated work on both our parts to get up, fully featured, bug-free, and ready for customers. Maybe I should look into getting investors? My friend Scott has told me that it’s not nearly as complicated as it sounds, so long as you know how to pitch it (and I don’t).

Still, at the very least, having my own place to myself will reduce at least some of my stress (no more crappy repetitive rock music we’ve both heard 1,000,000 times playing from the moment my roommate gets home until 1am in the morning, for example) and just make me feel a bit better about my place in life (my current apartment complex is skanky hooker central, and I am NOT just being colorful with my language).

Plus, you know, being somewhere that I might meet girls that aren’t over 40 and having sex with strangers for a living could improve the quality of my life and stress levels quite a bit. It’s been waaaaay too long since I’ve dated last. Not so much as a single date since Laura and I split up, actually, but then, when I live where I’m at and I’m not in school, it’s not like it was really likely I’d ever meet anyone to date. I suppose there are always SCA chicks (”If you can’t get laid in the SCA, you just don’t want any”), but given what I’ve met there… pass. Standards and morals are such a bother sometimes. :) [I am sure there are some very nice girls in the SCA who are available and my age - I just haven't met any of them yet.]

Actually, that reminds me of my other huge expense: the SCA. As soon as Yurii actually gets back to me (it’s been over a month since I last heard from him… getting worried), I have $1400 waiting to send him for the last few bits of essential armor I need to have a complete combat kit. $1400. On top of the $800 or so I’ve already spent on armor, plus the gas and hotel rooms and such for trips to SCA events (only been to two, unfortunately), plus the money I need to spend soon on clothing and such… not a cheap hobby. But it is fun, and the people are some of the best I’ve ever met. Five years of playing Kanar (a LARP), I met a handful of kick-ass people, but most of them were just selfish/skanky/jerks. Not all of them (those Kanar friends of mine reading this - obviously you’re in the Kick-Ass People group, otherwise you wouldn’t be a friend :p ), but most of them just aren’t even remotely the kind of people I’d want to spend time with. The people I’ve met in the SCA on the other hand… there’ve been a few jerks I’ve run into, but most of these people are just awesome. I do wish I could find a way to hang out with some of those cool Kanar people _without_ having to go to Kanar, though. I feel a bit sad that I’m pretty sure I won’t see some of those people again, unless I maybe run into them at Grace’s or if I actually stop being a loser and go to one of Craig’s get-togethers (which I feel really bad for never going to, because I really do want to, I like Craig and his friends quite a bit). :/

I’m rambling. Bah. Off to work.

Work has been murder. Not even because there’s so much of it, but just the particular projects and the jumping around it entails. I’m very much a 90/10 sort of guy when it comes to projects. (I love the first 90% of the project, and despise the last 10% of polishing and tweaking.)

SCA practice has been going well. Finally bought a piece of armor (a gorget). Still need all the other bits. Every time I can find a good deal, I either am just too late or piece doesn’t fit me or the time period I’m aiming for. Being 6′3″, 240lbs., and picky is a real problem with armor, it seems.

Quit Kanar last weekend. Showed up to hand off my character’s responsibilities so somebody else could run the guard. Hopefully it works out for everyone. I even banned myself from the Kanar boards (yay DNS tricks) so I wouldn’t keep wasting hours every day posting there. Why bother if I don’t play anymore? I don’t want to be like most the BOCs who spend a grotesque amount of their life posting on the boards for a game they won’t play.

Japan trip is still in the air. Planning on going at the end of April still, but haven’t gotten my passport back yet. Will be cutting it close. Don’t want to buy tickets until I’m sure I’ll actually be able to go.

Ashes of Eradur (K3) is coming along. Lots of people have been working on rules stuff, which is nice. I haven’t had much time for it, unfortunately. We’re having a setting discussion on Saturday, so that will be good.

Also trying to get a couple other projects started for Ogre Lord. Want to get a “old fashioned” type card deck out their for LARPers and maybe SCA players. People like to play modern card games in those settings, and it’s a lot nicer to have a “fitting” deck than a regular Aviator deck or whatever. I’m sure some people will bitch that the entire project is misguided since modern cards didn’t exist in old times, but I’ll get over it.

Bought a Wii on E-Bay.

$350 for what would cost $250 if I could just be patient enough to wait for it to show up in stores. Clearly, patience isn’t a virtue of mine.

The new company, Ogre Lord Studios, is now official. The website, ogrelord.com, is also up and running.

All of the K3 stuff is moved over to that site, and the old paths on awesomeplay.com redirect to the new site.

Once we’re a bit closer to having a product, I’ll setup things like forums, mailing list, web shop, etc.

So today was my second SCA practice. The first one I actually got to fight for real at. I most certainly got my ass handed to me. :)

It’s a good workout, and the people at the practice group are absolutely awesome all around. I think I’m going to enjoy being a part of this.

K3 is still coming along. It seems to be going both very fast and very slow. I think I need a mini-vacation from it over the next week, just to have a breather and to collect thoughts and concentrate on other things for a little while. I’ve always found that stepping away from a problem for a little while and coming back is immensely useful.

This weekend was almost like a surrogate Kanar event. I certainly feel as wore out and game-saturated as I usually do after a Kanar weekend.

Between the bought of editing Friday night on the K3 rules, the long discussion Saturday with a co-author and friends, and then fielding questions half the day on Sunday (after going to an SCA practice) and now getting ready to do another bought of editing… whew.

On the upside, people seem to be really into the K3 idea.

I’ve been learning XSL-FO, or the eXtensible Stylesheet Language - Formatting Objects, specification, with the aid of Apache FOP. All in all, it’s pretty darn cool.

There are a few things I find a bit distasteful, although most of those are apparently being taken care of in XSL-FO 2.0. Probably my biggest complaint is that XSL is a programming language in XML, which is just horrendous to work with at times. I think that XSL would have been better designed as a JavaScript w/ E4X support. Oh well.

The project I’m working on is a handbook for Kanar3. Whether or not that actually ends up turning into a real game is unknown at this point, though I’m not counting it. It does at least have a chance, though.

XSL-FO is making the project run fairly smooth. I have a custom XML format used for the book, which lets me do all sorts of nifty things like define game skills in a nice format and have the XSLT script turn that into a well-formatted list and also generate cost charts, something which CSS just flat out could never do.

Speaking of which, originally I was just using XSLT to transform the document to HTML. Unfortunately, no browser yet supports all of the CSS3 print media extensions for things well finely-controlled page breaks, page number referencing, and so on. I could make a nice web page, but the print version looked bad, and Firefox doesn’t seem to be able to print to PDF either. Plus Firefox has a few bugs with rendering multi-column layouts when printing.

So, now I’m using XSL-FO and Apache FOP and using that to generate a PDF. It’s quite nice. I don’t know how people generate documentation using word processors and the like.

I hereby coin a new term: Noob Lube

Noob Lube (n): anything which helps a new player “ease into” a game, e.g. game manuals and howtos.

My roommate has already started using the term in his WoW guild, and I’ve got my gaming group using it. Now I just need to get another 100,000,000 gamers using the term, and I’ll forever be a part of the gamer culture.

… quit judging me.

It hasn’t been much of a secret that I’ve had a dying interest in Kanar for the last year. This is largely due to the game itself slowly dying off, as I see it.

So, the absolutely logical thing for me to do would be to run for President of KGE. Yes, that was sarcastic. And yes, I actually did declare my candidacy for Kanar.

I need to work out the concrete details of my platform. I know how I feel on most issues, but I need to get it all organized and written out. This will be a sort of public draft of an outline of that platform.

First off are my goals as President. I’m not looking to revolutionize KGE or Kanar. I’m just looking to have things run. A large part of this is, quite simply, being an ass. That is, saying NO, and saying it as often as necessary. My largest goal is getting Kanar on its proper financial legs. That includes both properly managing the assets KGE already has, improving our current revenue sources, and creating new sources. I’d also like to clean up the marshal structure a bit, remove a lot of redundancy, remove a lot of room for butting heads, and try instead to just rely on competent people instead of relying on a group of incompetent people as a half-assed check-and-balance system. Also, to be clear, making friends is NOT one of my goals. I haven’t done a lot of friend making in the last three years at Kanar, and I certainly don’t intend for Presidency to make me popular.

Goals are nice, but they’re useless without plans to achieve them. For the financial end of things, I do intend on utilizing outside help. Namely, my mother is a CMA (Certified Managerial Accountant). Yeah, I want me mommy to help me. If that sounds lame to you, I guess that’s a valid viewpoint. I prefer to look at it as a wise utilization of available resources which will best execute my goals. For the marshal structure, I’d like to just put everything under the GM staff. If people are afraid of GMs taking too much control… well, that’s their fucking job. If they do poorly, they’ll get fired. I’m not out to make friends, I don’t care if the GM hates me afterwards, and I don’t care if his friends hate me.

The BOD and President do make choices when it comes to things like the rulebook and plots. If nothing else, we decide who is hired to handle those things. I have two different thoughts on these things. On the one hand, my ideal rulebook and ideal plots and game world are drastically different than Kanar today. Quite simply, those things could not be put into place in K1. However, I don’t plan on pushing those ideals. I’d like to simplify the game world and plots a small bit, mostly just solidify them. For the rulebook, I’m only interested in relatively minor edits. I’d like to get sub-classes and some kind of demi-magic replacement in effect. The forms of these we used to have are badly broken, but I’ve heard of numerous alternatives, many of which I feel could pan out rather well and would please the Kanar masses. (Which, to be frank, is our job; it isn’t my place as President to turn Kanar into my ideal game, it’s my job to improve it as much as possible for the majority of people who play it.)

There are a number of changes I’d like to make to the KGE SOPs to improve KGE as a business. Some of which I will push for right away, others not. For one, I do not intend to play any PCs during my initial term of President. At the very least, there is too much which needs to be done, and my time at events could be better spent interacting with the staff and players at large, which I can’t do if I’m dedicating my time to playing a PC. I do not want to ban BOD members from playing PCs. I see advantages to see, but I also see that our current BOD is comprised entirely of volunteers. Until KGE is at the point where it hires in BOD members from an outside pool of professionals, banning BOD members from play seems like a poor move. I do want to get to the point where the BOD members are hired in from outside professionals. I very strongly wish to remove the requirement that BOD members be players of K1. I also very strongly wish to remove the ability for players to vote on their BOD members. Customers at no other business get to directly vote on the business’s board; they vote by supporting the company with their dollars or taking their money elsewhere. Kanar should be no different.

That’s a start on my platform. There is a lot more I wish to say on the subject, but possibly writing this all at 4am isn’t the keenest of ideas. More will follow.

My roommate, his cousin, and I did some nice carpentry work yesterday. $50 worth of lumber, rope, and hardware later, we now have a “pel.” Basically, it’s a post with rope wrapped around it. We had to make on a base because, at the apartment, we can’t cement in a post like we’d have wanted. We also had to make it out of a 4×4 instead of a round post because Home Depot didn’t have any round posts of the necessary girth and height.

Anyways, it’s all together, and looks mighty good. I now just need to head out to Lowe’s and buy some steel pipes and have them cut down to 3′ and 4′ lengths for muscle training.

I also finally made a sword out of the rattan I bought off of Grace. I definitely like the weight it has. I’m quite pleased.