I don’t think of myself as some sort of eco-warrior. I’m just a guy that likes technology and gadgets. The fact that technology happens to be better for the environment is a happy side effect.

Case in point, I loved my BMW M6. 500+hp, V10, 9ish miles per gallon, 100+ smiles per gallon love. It’s an amazing piece of automotive technology.

However, I also love my money. And I hate wasting it. So when gas prices were sky high about a year ago and my maintenance repair bills on the car topped $7K over a six month period (naturally, it was just out of warrantee), I had to let her go.

And so began my quest for savings and economy while still pursuing my love of technology and performance. The first step on that journey was to engage Solar City to “solarify” my house. I looked at several solar companies but selected Solar City even though they weren’t the least expensive. They have massive market share and I trusted that they would be the least likely to screw up my roof or our electrical system given more “at bats” than pretty much anyone else.

I specced out a system of panels and inverters to generate an average of 1,000kwh per month (less in the winter, more in the summer), which would handle ALL of my household electrical needs in addition to driving 100 miles a day via an electric car.

Some of the many solar panels.

The inverter.

Nevermind the fact that I don’t have an electric car. I figure, we’d tackle that later.

It took about three and a half months from the initial outreach to Solar City to me flipping the switch and generating power. Steps in between were plan generation (how many panels, where would they go on my roof, etc.), HOA approval of the plan, City approval of the plan including permitting, installation of panels, inspection of installation by the city and by PG&E. So, lots of steps. But we got here.

It’s winter time currently, and it’s been cloudy the last few weeks so my hours of generation and amount of generation is at the low end of the averages, but it’s nice to see what’s happening.

Cloudy but still 400+ KW/hrs generated in about a half month

In the end, my electric bill is half of what it was (I’m buying power, not the panels, though I have the option of buying them later) and my price is locked in for 20 years. So next year’s PG&E price hike and the ones that come after, I’m immuned to. And it’s all from clean energy. Win-win all around.

So what about that car?

Well, my wife started a new job at the beginning of January and the commute has been difficult. She knows that I’ve wanted a Tesla for a while and we’ve discussed it at length, but we’ve been holding off for a variety of reasons. That said, the pain of the commute coupled with our solar power triggered her interest in an electric car. For those outside California, electric vehicles that register for the program, get a sticker that lets them use the carpool lanes with a single person in the car.

She found a hell of a deal on a 2015 Fiat 500e. No, it’s not a “from the ground up designed for electric” Tesla, but it’s a cute little commuter car with a nearly 90 mile range. It’s fun as hell to drive and has some particularly clever features that Tesla would be wise to adopt. I’d liken it to a go cart.

Front view.

From the rear

That same day, she let me put in our deposit on a Tesla Model X. We’re not committed to the purchase yet, but my place in line (somewhere in the 15,000s) is held for when pricing, configurations and availability get shared later this year. I’m super excited as the Model X would be a perfect replacement for our 15 year old Lexus RX300 (which is still running great with about 220K miles on it… knock on wood).

It looks nice in white, doesn’t it?

So in my head, I’d like to say we bought two electric cars in one day (we didn’t really, but I like to think that because that’s cool to say).

But owning an electric car isn’t all fun and games… especially if you don’t have a level 2 charger handy. And figuring out how to handle our level 2 charging needs for a future Tesla in addition to the Fiat required some research and some planning. And an electrician. Here’s what we learned and the approach we took.

Leveling Up

So the Fiat comes with a little level 1 charger, that can plug into a standard 110V outlet. It’ll charge about 10 miles every 3 hours on average (more when it’s empty, less when it’s nearly full), so nearly 24 hours for a full charge.

A level 2 charger, at 220V-240V, 30AMP output, it can charge empty to full in about 4 hours.

However, to do that, requires a dedicated 220V-240V, 40 AMP circuit and the purchase of a charging station.

I’d thought we’d go to Tesla and we’d get one of their High Power Charge Stations, however, what we’d learned is that Tesla’s stations output at a much higher rate than standard stations and that they don’t have adapters to translate to non-Tesla cars (which every other car in the world currently uses an SAE J1772 connector). Tesla’s connector is proprietary given the higher power needed to charge much larger batteries than any other electric cars on the market today.

As I mentioned, Teslas can take up to an 100 AMP connection for twin charging (which could charge from empty to full in 9 hours, which is really fast considering the 260-300 mile range) and require a 50AMP minimum input and 100 AMP maximum (there are dip switches in the HPWC to configure it depending upon the input).

Most of the chargers on the market for all other cars on the market (BMWs, Fiats, Toyotas, Nissans, Fords, Chevy’s etc.) are meant to be hardwired to a 30 AMP or 40 AMP circuit at maximum. So we don’t have a “one size fits all solution”.

However, we had an electrician put in a single 100AMP circuit, off of which he put a breakered 40AMP step down to connect a level 2 charge station for the Fiat.

Blink in the box	High Voltage! 220V, 100 Amp circuit going in the main
Steve installing the Blink below the 40 AMP breaker	There’s 100AMPs running into this box, 40AMPs gets split off for the Blink charging station

We selected the Blink charging station which we ordered from Amazon. The trick we did here is, to have the charging station wired to a plug (a NEMA 14-50 I believe) instead of hardwiring in the event we happen to move some day.

When we’re ready and actually pull the trigger on the Model X, we’ll be able to wire in a Tesla HPWC in a twin charger setup (full 80-100 AMP draw) and still have the Fiat charging too (or whatever else we have in the future). Hell, someday, if we have two Teslas, we’ll be able to do one at twin charger speed and a second at standard 40 AMP speed simultaneously.

So in short, we should be future proof for our level 2 charging needs for Tesla and non-Tesla operations at this point.

Phase one complete. Bring on the Tesla Model X

If anyone is contemplating going the solar route, let me know and I’ll put you in as a reference for Solar City and they’ll contact you for a consultation (no charge) and walk you through the process. I’m not sure about all of them but my rep was great for hand-holding through the process. If you go with them, it saves me a little money (no pressure though).

UPDATE

I got a lot of comments on my Facebook post about this blog entry. One great one I think is worth sharing from Scott Le Grand who writes.

To which I responded with some info that I think may also help folks understand how to figure out if you’re a good candidate for solar:

I’ve had the luxury of being able to play a lot of games this year, more so than probably any year of the past decade. Given my inability to sleep at this moment, I figured I’d share some recommendations.
My favorites in no particular order:

Wildstar – I’ve played a lot of MMOs over the years. This one is challenging but extremely rewarding. Classes are varied and combat is highly kinetic. Story is decent. Social mechanics are solid and getting better now that the megaserver is up. Server stability has been far better than most MMOs. Post launch support has been “ok”. It’s been a little slower on some content pushes than I’d like but the drops have been sizeable. This is NOT the MMO to play for casual players, but for experienced MMO folks, it’s easily one of the best I’ve played over the past 15 years. There’s no such thing as a perfect MMO (or game for that matter) but in terms of hours played, this one is probably #1 for me on the year. More people should be playing it (go Exiles!).

Sunset Overdrive – Traversal and combat takes about an hour to get used to, but man, once you have all of the movement abilities, a couple of key weapons and a few amps in place, there are very few games that “feel” as satisfying as this one. Some really great set pieces. It’s Jet Grind Radio meets Ratchet & Clank meets Armed & Dangerous (the Planet Moon one, not the John Candy one).

Middle Earth – Shadow of Mordor – Two words: Nemesis System. It’s all about decent core gameplay with compelling metagoals and character advancement in a world people care about. Probably the biggest surprise for me on the year.

Infamous Second Son – Good story, beautiful game, solid and varied mechanics. Neon at night.

Plants vs. Zombies Garden Warfare – Literally 100 hours played on XB1… then probably another 100 so far on PC. Perfect game for families. We routinely have LAN parties at the house with my daughter and her friends. Earning coins and unlocking packs is a blast. Pop Cap has done a fantastic job supporting the game with new content post-launch.

South Park – The Stick of Truth – Hard to pick a part of this I enjoyed most but there was never a shortage of “oh, my!” moments. Special shout out for the Canada sequence.

Smash Brothers Wii U – Has been played in our house to death. Will probably continue to be played for years to come.

Child of Light – As much art as game, a classic RPG that sadly, doesn’t get made too often any more.

Bravely Default – Probably the best Final Fantasy game in the last decade… and it wasn’t even really a Final Fantasy game.

Spiral Knights – This F2P MMO launched several years ago (fun fact, while at Capcom, Scot Bayless and I tried to sign it but Sega beat us to the punch and bought Three Rings) but the changes made to the game this year were significant, particularly with regard to how monetization around the energy system worked so I’m considering it “revived” in 2014. I played a ton of it (and spent a ton of money on it) this year with my daughter after several years away from it. It’s Zelda meets Bomberman meets Megaman (so skill is rewarded) in instanced, grindy fun.

Special mentions:

Far Cry 4 – not far enough in it yet to say that it makes this list but given more time to play, it could.

Trove – Alas, where Cube World faltered, Trove has picked up. Action based MMOthat I play with my daughter and nephew a lot. It’s a combination of Minecraft and Cube World and is worth playing.

League of Legends – The game (and in particular, its players) continues to enthrall and infuriate me. Another thing I play a lot with my daughter. The changes made this year to the game were significant and an improvement.

Heroes of the Storm – Consider this “one to watch” for 2015. I’ve got a fair bit of time under my belt with it and I enjoy it a ton though the changes over the course of 2014 were huge and I’m sure it will continue to evolve before it actually really launches.

Hearthstone – iPad gaming at its best. Magic made accessible but still deep. Smart compulsion loops. I need to pick up the expansion for some future trips.

GTA 5 HD – I need to revisit this. I’m waiting for the PC release in 2015.

Neverwinter – My daughter and I played a fair amount of this in 2014 (and spent a ton of cash here) as well, though again, it’s not a 2014 launch.

Transistor – Worth playing, particularly for the ending which I didn’t see coming.

Missed my Expectations:

Destiny – Put in about 15 hours. I need to revisit at some point but I’d have thought this would have grabbed me more.

Dragon Age: Inquisition – I’m a huge DA fan having finished all of the prior games/dlc, this one I’m about 25 hours into and it feels much slower and more scattershot. I like it, just not as much as I would have thought I would have given my love for the franchise and the heapings of praise it has been given from the media. Nonetheless, it will get finished.

Titanfall – Feels good to play, but for some reason, I just couldn’t keep playing.

Watchdogs – I wanted to love it and it’s a beautiful game, particularly on PC, but again I just wasn’t compelled to finish it.

Skylanders: Trap Force – We’re not done with it yet, but in spite of the new trap mechanics, it’s starting to feel formulaic and the character designs don’t feel as creative as past outings. It’s still good, but it doesn’t feel “fresh”.

That’s it. Come at me and let me know what else I should have played but missed.

It’s been a long time since I’ve written anything here. I’ve had several updates on Facebook (not public) or to a lesser extent, Google+ (slightly more public but not fully), but I should probably provide some updates as we near the end of 2014.

This past year got off to a slow start professionally following the transition away from my Kontested startup but toward the middle of the year, picked up nicely. The offers I was expecting in my prior post sadly, failed to materialize for different reasons. One was due to financial issues within the company (where I still have many friends and have great respect for). The other was due to geopolitical machinations in April that caused the company to reconsider taking a bigger position in the US at this time (hint: it was a very large Russian company).

After those two things went away, I decided to stop “looking for a job” but instead work on expanding my consulting business. And in so doing, I’ve continued doing work with Q-Loc, but added on-going positions/projects with Digital Development Management, Six Foot/Grey Box and Digital Domain.

Each of these is exciting in their own ways and they cover very different areas (F2P online gaming/AAA PC gaming, AAA console gaming, port work, localization, QA, VR, mobile in the West and China, etc.). As it’s turned out, I’ve had to turn down more potential work simply because there’s not enough hours in the day and the need to balance my time between these four clients.

Moving into 2015, all of my clients from 2014 will stay my clients for the foreseeable future, though the mix of time spent with them may change a bit.

On top of these projects, I’m still participating on a few board of directors and boards of advisory functions that fill in what little time I have remaining. One of the more notable new ones is for IEP.

In any event, I wish you all a happy new year. I’ll see some of you at CES, Dice or GDC in the first quarter.

It’s funny, I have a dedicated web site and blog that I really don’t use. I mostly post to Google+ or Facebook though even there it’s sort of rare.

Just for purposes of recording some history, let’s talk a bit about what I’ve been up to in the last eight months or so.

First, after leaving Capcom, I went straight into trying to get a new startup off the ground called Kontested. Its focus was on skill-based gaming (that is, the wagering of real money on the outcome of a game of skill, as opposed to a game of chance).

The objectives of the company were clear, but for me, the attraction was threefold:

1. A complex set of problems (legal, technical, social) that haven’t been solved broadly.

2. Keeping two people working with me that I respect greatly and enjoyed working with (Travis Williams and Zack Karlsson).

3. The potential rewards for solving the above problems could be considerable.

Now, unfortunately finding funding for such things is tricky and the funding process, which we hoped would have been completed early in the process, dragged on. We did as much work on the product and the plan as we could on spec until we needed more people (programmers and the like) and needed to cut checks for outside partners (backend, operations, content partners, etc.).

Eventually, Travis and Zack had to find other gigs to keep paying the rents, which takes away from attraction #2 and impairs the ability to solve problems in attraction #1.

I too started to look around at other opportunities in February, around the Dice Summit. In the mean time, I’ve been doing some consulting work for a development studio in Warsaw, Poland called Q-loc. We used them on about a dozen projects at Capcom during my time there and they’ve always delivered so I had no issue vouching for them. I’m also starting some consulting work with a high-end, well known VFX studio in LA who is trying to get more into games.

As it stands right now, I’m sitting on a couple offers for really amazing opportunities and I believe there will be a few more coming in the next couple weeks. After which time, I’ll wind down my consulting projects and jump in full time somewhere or another.

Whether I actually wait another year to write something here about it, remains to be seen. In the mean time, keep me friended/circled on Facebook and Google+. 🙂

Usually I would use Google+ for something like this but since I’m doing in-line images and stuff I really needed something that offers more flexible layouts. So here I am on my seldomly used blog.

Anyway, a couple of weekends ago, I hooked up my backup gaming PC (Ivybridge Core i7 and Geforce 680) to my 65″ living room TV. I’d picked up a cheap wireless 802.11n dongle and played some League of Legends and stuff in 7.1 surround in comfy couch mode. I decided, I needed a more permanent setup.

At first, I was using a 15′ USB extension cord to get KB and mouse to my couch. The daughterly unit tripped over it and it wasn’t “pretty”. Not so good. I decided I wanted the PC closer to the back of the room, so I picked up a 30′ HDMI cable from monoprice.com (btw, if you ever need cables of any kind, that’s where you go). I ran the cable under the edge of the carpet around the room to hide it. Cost was about $45.

Second, I was getting significant packet loss for online play over the wireless connection (it’s a fair distance, through many layers of sheet rock from my office to my living room). Multiple disconnects, reconnects. As luck would have it Amazon was having a crazy sale on Trendnet TPL-402E2K 500Mbps homeplug network setups. Now, it’s no where near 500Mbps (in practice it seems closer to about 15-20Mbps) but it streams HD from my media server or Netflix with no problem and I had no disconnects in LOL last night. So I’ll call that a win. For good measure, I just ordered another set to get my upstairs bedroom and family room on the same homeplug network as the set is still on sale at Amazon (normally $199, currently $69).

I also picked up some time ago, a nice Microsoft wireless controller receiver so that my wireless X360 controllers can sync with my PC. I’ll be moving my Mad Catz RAT 9 mouse to the living room for wireless goodness and using my RAT 7 in the office (same mouse but wired). I made a call to my boys at Mad Catz to see if I couldn’t liberate one of their new Strike 7 keyboards seeing as I love their RAT 7 and RAT 9s so much. I’m told, there’s one in the mail to me as we speak.

So I set this all up last night and played some Xcom and Skyrim too just to mess around. I’m all smiles.

PHASE 2

For the next step in the project, I needed a better surface for the keyboard and mouse when I’m sitting on the couch. I was inspired by the Couchmaster from Nerdytec (http://www.nerdytec.com/). Their price is 150 Euro ($200) for the lower end unit.

I challenged myself to see if I couldn’t make something that was functionally equivalent (I don’t need pockets, wrist rests, cable routing or USB hubs) for about $50 or less. I succeeded.

First, I needed a surface. I selected an 8 foot 1″ X 12″ at Home Depot that I had cut to 32″ in length. In hindsight, I probably should have done 34″ or 35″ but it’s fine. Cost: $10.

Second, I went to Wal-mart and bought 1 yard of black denim fabric. I really wanted some faux black leather, but they didn’t have any, so this was close enough to match my black leather couches and is fairly durable. Cost: $5.

I then picked up some industrial strength black Velcro from Home Depot. Cost: $3.

Step 1: Wrap the 32″ x 1″ x 12″ in the black denim and staple gun it all together. When you’re done it should look like this:

The top side (where your KB and mouse will go) should look like this:

All good. Now I have a decent mousing surface that I wanted to semi-permanently affix. It’s a hard surface but this could just as easily be done with a soft mouse pad.

I put bits of velcro at each corner of the mousing surface. then stuck the other side to the denim. I then pulled the velcro apart and staple gunned the velcro into the denim in for good measure.

Here it is affixed to the board via velcro.

Now, I could do the same process with the keyboard, however, I’m going to swap keyboards so, so for now, the keyboard is just sitting on top. When I get the new keyboard, I will make it semi-permanent with the same velcro approach.

The next part I need are the supports for the board. I was thinking, what’s in the Nerdytec supports? Clearly, it’s some sort of foam. So I Googled “foam” and came across a site that will custom cut and ship foam called Foam Factory. There you can input shapes and sizes of custom foam and have them sent your way.

I selected custom cushion, that was to be 6″ thick x 8″ wide by 24″ long (using dimensions similar to those given on the Nerdytec site). I used regular poly foam and I had a dacron wrap added to them, just for looks. The cost for two of them was $25 with shipping.

For the record, the dacron wrap adds some height and width. I may at some point remove it. Even when using the 6″ high, it’s a little higher than I’d like. In hindsight, a 5″ thickness might have been the better way to go for my legs/setup. But either way, it works great.

Here’s a more current pic with mechanical keyboard (much better).

Try it, you’ll like it. 🙂

Spent the weekend “camping” at a retreat in Pescadero with Chris, JJ and their daughter Maya. I say “camping” because we had a room in the lodge, so heat, bathrooms and electricity for all. So much for roughing it. It was a single night out on Saturday after a hard morning of Kajukembo. I’ll post some pics in the Flickr stream at some point. Just really beautiful.

JJ, Chris and I took a stroll down to the ocean and found a quiet beach. We had a bottle of wine as we watched Maya play with the birds. Then a sea lion popped up about 20 feet from the shore and proceeded to just watch us for the next 30 minutes or so, seemingly curious as to what we were doing on “his” beach.

Was a nice afternoon. The breeze wasn’t the usual brisk ocean air. A bit warmer and nicer.

In other news, many things moving quickly at work. A few bottlenecks appear to be getting broken (fingers crossed). Upcoming travel schedule is nutty.

Looking forward to my sister’s wedding in a couple weeks. It’ll be nice to see the extended family, many of whom I haven’t seen in 10+ years.

It’s just been so long since I’ve had even five minutes to update. Most of my updates have been on my Google+ profile. I’ve almost completely given up Facebook for G+.

Travel has finally slowed down in this new year. Closing the year right now at work. Tough going at the moment.

Kaiya has been growing quickly. She’s almost 50 pounds now.

As I type this I’m sitting in our mortgage broker’s office, waiting to sign the mortgage on a new property. Sharon did all of the legwork on this. It’s right next to our other property. We’ll have some work to do on it before we can rent it out but not as much as we had on the other one.

I’m off to Rome in a week and a half for our global media summit. I’ll likely have to head to brazil some time in May to scout offices and sign a lease on new space there. Then we’re in to E3 in June, a small vacation week also in June, a Japan trip in July and a parental visit also in July.

More news to follow when I get time.

There’s just an absolute ton of things going on right now between work and home.

Kaiya appears to be doing well at school. Shes almost done with her latest swimming lesson sessions and she’s getting quite good. Sharon is a little crazy at work but thankfully she’s being extremely accommodating of the crazy amount of work and travel I’ve had to do and my in-laws are helping out.

Work wise I’ve been pushing through a number of exciting initiatives and getting great support from our management in Japan. Nothing I can talk about right now but these are are big new things for Capcom.

Still a very far way to go in approval of the final plans on these fronts but alignment on general direction has been achieved with all members of the board and that’s a huge vote of confidence in what we’re trying to do.

On a related note, I’ve got a new VP of biz Dev and digital platforms starting in a few weeks that I’m very excited about. He’ll be taking a number of things off my plate and giving them much needed focus, freeing me to get back to running the business better and being more strategic instead of reactive.

I have a ton of travel coming up in the next few weeks, both vacation and business related. I’m mostly looking forward to them. Not that its a huge deal but with four more international trips before the end of this year, I should handily now make 1K status on United, if not Global Services.

So the travel hasn’t really let up and there’s so many things happening at work that it’s very difficult to keep up with. On the plus side, I’m finally getting some help via a new executive hire on my team. As you might be able to tell, I’ve been spread incredibly thin. My new VP of Biz Dev and Digital Platforms will be starting soon (he’ll have to remain anonymous until he actually starts) so a nice chunk of work will be coming off of my plate and some much needed focus in key growth areas for us will be getting more attention than I’ve been able to give them.

Tokyo Game show itself was really slow. Far fewer people at the business days than I’ve ever seen and by miles, far fewer Westerners. Booths were smaller and there was a huge influx of mobile/tablet content and hardware. That said, my three days before the show were slammed with dozens of internal meetings that were extremely productive and promising. On my way back it seems my usual United flight out of Narita got cancelled and I got auto-switched to an ANA flight. Was fine and it wasn’t much of a delay, but I much prefer United’s planes and crew. 🙂

In other travel news, I’ve got another two or three international trips before the end of the year coming up. Cool stuff, unfortunately most of which I can’t talk about but stay tuned.

In gadget news, I’m keeping an eye on the Amazon Fire tablet. Interesting stuff. Not so thrilled about the lack of Google Marketplace but I get why it is what it is (and how it’s priced how it is). That said, I hope there’s a refresh early next year with a couple more bells and whistles. I think that would make a great replacement for my wife’s Kindle.

The Netflix split into digital and physical companies, as a consumer, I find a bit annoying. I’m not entirely sure I get the logic of creating a separate company and a new brand. Separate divisions, sure, I can get that. We’ll see what the future holds. I’m happy they’re getting into games at least. New customers are always good.

Wow, I’ve had absolutely no time to update.

In the past few weeks I’ve been to Tokyo, Osaka, San Diego (Comic-con), Vegas (Evo) and now my parents have been in town for a week. I shortly leave for London, Cologne and then back again. My parents will be back when I return. Then Supper Club, Pax and then Tokyo Game Show.

Work is busy. Some exciting things going on. Need more time to keep updating.

So the family went out and about today to hit up the 4th celebrations at Jack London Square in Oakland. Kaiya got to ride some big slides, do face painting, try her hand at some hula hooping (she was pretty good), spent a good amount of time in the petting zoo, worked on making a custom hat and got to be put in a bubble. Good fun and a great day out for all involved.

For more pictures and videos, have a look at the set on flickr.

Just Kaiya getting down with her bad self. And the music, for those who are wondering, was from the live band just in the square.

Between work travel, family visits, family travel and just the usual day to day nutiness, the next eight weeks are going to get really wild. I’ll be in Tokyo, Osaka, London, Cologne, Healdsburg, San Diego and Las Vegas, all in the next eight weeks. Oh and mom and dad will be visiting for a little more than a week in that window too (which I’m looking forward to).

At the same time I’m trying to keep on top of things workwise but there are a fair number of shifting components that are a bit out of anyone’s control (which I can’t discuss) but I will have to react to.

Sharon just got back from a week in Prague for her company’s global sales summit. My mother-in-law was as always, a huge help during that week.

I just got back from E3 about three weeks ago. The show went very well for us and I had a ton of productive internal and external meetings.

We’re about to release SSFIV:Arcade Edition for PC next week, which is something I fought really hard to have happen internally, trying to respect the fans’ requests. Unfortunately, fucking pirates have already cracked and leaked the game online in advance of the launch next week. While inevitable, it’s truly heartbreaking for many folks here to see that happen in the timeframe it did (and yes, had there been more time in the dev schedule, we could have used ZDPP to lock it down, but we were trying to keep the release date as close to the console retail release as possible so we cut a couple corners). Hopefully the paying fans who have been asking for it will be significant enough to justify the release but we really needed it to stay locked down another couple weeks.

Mini-edit – Our team has spent some time looking at the pirate version. It seems some of their workarounds involve the running of virtual machines that eat CPU cycles to circumvent what we had in place for security. The good news: their game runs slower, which means a worse experience for illegitimate users. Secondly, they still have no online play or services (which we knew were secure).

I often do media interviews on behalf of Capcom. A particularly large one just went live at IGN.

http://wii.ign.com/articles/117/1172319p1.html

Just a little post to indicate that I am indeed still alive.

Did some Captivating work in Miami in early April.

We took some new family portraits (and I even managed to get some headshots in for work in the session).

In May, I did a lot of travel to Seattle and San Diego. I’m off again to Seattle tomorrow.

Workwise things have been ok. Not great. Not disastrous. And anything that’s smoldering I’ve got plans for how to extinguish before it becomes a full on fire.

We picked up a Flip Camera and have posted some movies to Flipshare, only to learn that Cisco has killed the line and Flipshare stuff will only be up for about 30 days at a time. I’ll figure out some longer term home for them but I’m looking into more proper privacy settings so the general public can’t search or find them. Youtube probably.

Kaiya is reading more and more. School is nearly done for this year (June 16 is her last day). During the summer she will be spending full days at Creative Kids where we hope her Mandarin will continue to improve and they’ll keep her English and Math skills sharp for the summer.

From a recreational standpoint, she and I are playing a lot of Spiral Knights on the weekends. If anyone wants to join us, create a knight and we’ll invite you on our clockwork runs. She’s going to take a break for 3 months from her karate classes and instead will be moving back to swimming lessons for the summer. She can already mostly swim but this is really to make her a safer, stronger swimmer.

She also just got her hair cut REALLY short in a new A line. We did this to her a couple years ago too, but her hair had since grown out to the middle/bottom of  back. Now it’s not even to her neck. 🙂

Upcoming: I’m in LA for E3 the week after next. Then I should be in town for a couple weeks until things start to get crazy again in July.

In any event, I’ll try to keep this a bit more updated as time allows.

As I write this, I’m sitting in LAX waiting for our flight back to Oakland after a beautiful week of cruising the Mexican Riviera on the Disney Wonder. If you want to jump to the tons of pictures I took, just look at this Flickr set.

We started our family journey last Sunday morning, rather early. We had to be out of the house around 6AM to pick up my in-laws who were going to drop us off at the airport. No issues at the airport aside from flying Southwest (which I hate) and we found our way to LAX.

A $60 taxi ride later, we were just outside the World Cruise Terminal, which is a huge building at the port of LA. Standing alongside that building was the 10+ stories of the Disney Wonder, which is nearly identical to the Disney Magic (a ship we’d been on in the Caribbean about two years prior).

We were able to check in and board with no issues. We dumped our bags in our stateroom (which like all cruise staterooms, was rather cramped being about the size of our master bathroom… we have a large master bath). I didn’t really take any new pictures of the state room as it’s pretty much identical to the one we had on the Magic.

We reacquainted ourselves with the layout of the ship: where all the restaurants, kids clubs, movie theater, sports bar, etc. all were and then settled in for some relaxation over the next couple days.

We had two days at sea to start and that first night coming out of LA, the sea was rough and cold. It was raining, windy and probably around 50 degrees at best. So like most folks, we stayed indoors. We got to meet our dinner servers that evening (Lavendra from India and Eder from Peru) who would be attending to our dining needs each night of the trip.

As usual, food was the highlight of our parental experience for the trip. Fine meals were prepared each evening (lunches and breakfasts were “ok” but nothing compared to the dinners). Sharon and I ordered the 5 bottle wine package so for five of the nights; we picked a different bottle of wine each evening.

But the best night was our 10th anniversary dinner at Palo’s which is the “adults only” restaurant. It requires extra reservations but we had a fantastic meal. I’d asked the sommelier to have some 2002 Dom Perignon ready for us upon our arrival. Hristof was our server and he took amazing care of us.

I started with a Tuna Carpaccio then moved on to a Lobster/Mascarpone ravioli (prepared by hand just that afternoon) with a main course of Australian beef tenderloin (which was good) and a second dish of New Zealand rack of lamb (which was amazing). I closed with a special chocolate soufflé, which was covered in both dark and white chocolate. I forget what Sharon had but whatever it was, I “won”.

When we were done, the head server came over and presented us with a “special anniversary” desert. While not really edible, it was a beautifully designed plate of chocolate/raspberry puree to celebrate our special night.

Special Dessert

When we weren’t eating (which wasn’t often… I’m sure I’m a solid +5 lbs heavier today than at the start of the trip), we were checking out shows, swimming (on the warmer days), exploring the two ports, and otherwise enjoying the ship.

Kaiya’s favorite two things were by far the pools and the Oceaneer’s Lab.

Once she was in either pool (Mickey’s kids pool or the Goofy family pool), we had an extremely difficult time getting her out. The first day in Cabo, we got back from our shore visit a bit early and took advantage of the fact that it was largely empty. She also discovered the fun of the Mickey water slide. She spent about five straight hours in the pool, but despiteSPF50 sunscreen, she wound up with a bit of a sunburn on her shoulders. We had to keep her out of the sun for the next two days.

The Lab is supposed to be for kids ages 8-10, but she much preferred the programming and activities in the lab versus the Club (which was more her age). She made flubber, made some bracelets, played computer games, baked cookies, attended a Disney Trivia Game Show and more. She didn’t spend too much time in the clubs this trip. Probably not more than 6 hours over the whole trip but she did like the time she spent there and would have spent more if we’d let her.

Kaiya has LOADS of pictures with princesses and characters

There were two ports-of-call: Puerto Vallarta and Cabo San Lucas. PV was a first for us and we explored for a couple hours. We found a touristy flea market where we bought Kaiya some red “Oakley” sunglasses (surely counterfeit) and a couple of pottery magnets (clearly mass produced “by hand”). In general, we found it to be very similar to the Mexican ports we’ve visited on the Gulf side of the country and similar to our prior experiences in Cabo. Pretty to visit, but so tourist focused, not really super interesting.

I needed to pick up a better pair of pants for our dinner at Palo’s so we quick ran across the street to the mall which had a Liverpool’s as an anchor store to pick up a black pair of slacks. While there, I ran into a Game Planet (effectively a Gamestop in Mexico) and was a bit shocked to see frontline titles running for $999 Mexican (about $90 US). Bummer for that market. I’m going to have to look into the mechanics of that a bit more when I’m back in the office. On the plus side they had MvC3 in stock on both platforms so someone’s doing their job down here. 🙂

Our Cabo visit we decided to embrace the tourist trap nature of the port. Sharon wanted a beer as soon as we got off the tender boat, so she paid about 12X what a beer would cost if we walked just 5 minutes away from the disembarkation point at Senior Frog’s. She was lured in by the waiter making balloon animal hats for kids and adults alike and the singing the waiters did for the patrons. In any event, she ordered herself a Tecate Light (about as cheap a beer as you can get, even in the US) and Kaiya got a Shirley Temple in a giant “yard” plastic cup that was nearly as tall as she was. Unfortunately, it seems that that drink used ice from unfiltered Mexican water which lead to a few tummy problems for Kaiya over the next two days, but I’ll save you the gruesome detail there.

After the little drink, there was a shack purporting to be a charity for a Tiger and Lion preserve in Mexico City. Whether that’s true or not is unknown but what’s known was that for a $25 donation, we could have our picture taken with a baby lion or tiger which is pretty cool. So we did that. I’m hoping that some portion of that $25 is indeed going to a preserve or at least to take care of the 2 month old tiger cub that we got to hold and play with for about 10 minutes. Very nice little animal, though a bit mouthy (teething) and a bit smelly. Think of it like a pound puppy both.

Tiger cubs - cute but smelly

A little more wandering around and we picked up some other knick-knacks here and there from street vendors for Kaiya. Inevitably, 50 feet down the road we’d find someone else selling the same thing for 1/3rd of what we’d paid for ours.

Kaiya and Christian in Cabo

All in all it was a great trip but the one oddity was that there was a crewmember missing from the second day onward. There were searches conducted of the whole ship and investigations, but no news was shared with cruise goers. Only some Google news searches I did the night before we were back in LA confirmed that she still hadn’t been found and additional investigations were pending. Was very unusual and I’d hope that there’s ultimately a happy ending to the story (or at least a resolution), as unlikely as that may be at this point.

So my wife calls me at work yesterday and says “Who is Patrick McGillford?”.

I’m like “who?”

“Patrick McGillford” she says.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“You wrote him a check for $1,652 on Monday.”

Now at this point I’m thinking she’s completely lost it. I wrote checks to PG&E, our water company, our security alarm company, but no Patrick McGillford. And I’d only been home about 24 hours. There’s no way it could be anyone else.

We fire up the BofA website and I take a look at the check in question. Yep. That’s my signature… but nothing else on the check is my handwriting. Straight up forged check.

Sharon needed to head into the bank to have that account closed and to alert them to the fraud. Evidently in our area it’s happening daily. What we think happened is that someone took the checks out of our mailbox on Friday (flag was up :)). They then worked some magic in photoshop to remove all of the amount and to information, and then wrote in their own, keeping my signature and account information all intact, printed it out on a color printer and then marched off to the bank to cash it.

Looks like the teller wasn’t astute enough to catch it.

Sneaky bastards.

So I’ve spent a good bit longer in Japan this trip than I had expected.

I did my meetings in Tokyo on Monday. Shinkonsen to Osaka Monday night. A slew of meetings and dinners through Friday morning when I was planning on heading back to San Francisco.

Now normally, I fly directly out of Kansai in Osaka but due to United being ridiculously over priced on their international flights of late, I took ANA. That means, I was flying through Narita (Tokyo) via Itami, which is the smaller airport in Osaka.

So I’m on my domestic flight from Itami to Narita and we’re on final approach to land in Tokyo. All of a sudden, the pilot pulls up and comes on the PA. He informs us that there has just been a massive earthquake in Tokyo and that we’re turning around and heading back to Osaka.

Obviously, we don’t know any more details than that. I’m thinking, great, I’m gonna miss my connecting flight.

We land back at Osaka and I fire up the iPhone while I get in line with the rest of the folks on the flight to see what alternate arrangements could be made. A couple quick Google searches on “Tokyo Earthquake” turns up reports of 9.0, 8.9 and 8.8 quakes (turns out 8.9 was the right number). Ok, this is a bit more serious than I’d thought and had my flight been scheduled to arrive even 15 minutes later, I’d have been on the ground in the middle of it.

To understand the magnitude of this disaster, this is the largest quake in Japan’s history and the 8th largest in the recorded history of the world. And as bad as the earthquake was, the resulting tsunamis have been much more devastating.

Resulting tsunami’s washed away entire villages around Tokyo. This footage is terrifying.

Damn good thing the flight turned around.

Thankfully, one of my Japanese co-workers was also on this flight, Tommy. We quickly ascertained that we weren’t going anywhere. At the same time we checked on some of our other colleagues who were either in transit via Tokyo or already in Tokyo. Thankfully, all were either safe or also being turned around back to Osaka (Kaori specifically).

I updated my Facebook with the news that I was ok. I was getting loads of text inquiries and Facebook inquiries so that was by far the easiest way to spread the word (thanks all for your concern).

We headed back to the office to plot our options. Tommy sorted out flights for us the following Monday and we’d asked my admin to see what she could do the next morning US time. Kaori sorted us out some rooms at the Hotel Brighton. Hotel rooms in general were in very short supply.

We had several of our Tokyo office folks similarly stranded in Osaka so we all went out for a Korean BBQ dinner and then retired.

The next day, Tommy, Sekiguchi-san and headed out to Kyoto to see some temples and stuff with the trains having now resumed service, at least in this part of the country. Now I’ve rarely had any time to actually “see” Japan so this was exciting. A quick 1 hour train ride and we were in Kyoto which is about as traditional a Japanese city as you could possibly imagine.

I’m pretty tired today. I’m certain we walked literally more than 20 miles yesterday over our 12 hour journey. I should have had a silly trip meter app running on my iphone to verify.

I’ve put up a ton of pictures from my crappy camera in this set.

Here’s a few cool ones:

As I head back to SF today (hopefully) I’m going the same route (Itami -> Narita -> San Francisco). Unfortunately, as I write this, the government has confirmed that there’s a significant meltdown risk at the nuclear reactor in Fukushima, not too far from Tokyo. Fingers crossed they can get it contained, most importantly for the people of Fukushima.

Since the big quake, there have been more than 500 aftershocks at 5.0 or higher… and 50 of those were 6.0 or higher. Very scary times in Japan and it’s going to take a long time for this to be recovered from.

I’m such a pathetic schlub.

Why you ask? Because in spite of Apple taking the laziest upgrade paths on the iPad 2, I’m still buying one. And secondly, having dutifully waited until March 11 for the launch (after having passed on iPad1 because it didn’t quite do it for me),  I ordered one from Apple.com in the hopes that I would have one in tow with me when I go on vacation in a week. I’ve since found out that I can not (more on that in a second).

Here’s what I’m pissed about (and this is the short version).

1. Emphasis on silicon… but not enough. The iPad 2 has posted some impressive gains in horsepower moving to the “A5” chip. Dual core, 1GHz, much more powerful GPU performance. All great… but it’s only got 512MB of RAM when nearly every other competing Android tablet has 1GB.

2. The storage sizes still cap at 64GB, same as last year. I want the iPad to do for my videoes what the iPod does for my music. Allow me to carry my whole damn collection with me. The biggest config should have been 128MB and/or they should have added USB or SD card support (which pretty much every Android tablet has SD card support). iOS should support removable storage solutions.

3. Cameras – one of the reasons I sat out of last year’s iPad was no camera. I use my iPhone 3G (yes, only 3G… pity me) camera all the time for automatic uploads to my Flickr account from wherever I happen to be (roaming data charges notwithstanding). Given that I’m not likely to have an upgraded phone any time soon (it’s a work phone I’ve moved my personal number to which IT will upgrade once every ten years and I’m not carrying two devices) I really wanted an external high grade camera. Seriously, at about 1MP on the back and VGA on the front, I’ll bet Apple had to work to find such low resolution CCDs to put in this thing.

4. Same display as iPad1 – nuff said.

5. Getting one – Ok, Apple announces the launch last week. Time to go preorder at Apple.com. WTF, I can’t? I have to check back on March 11 the day of launch? I check Best Buy.com and Amazon.com. They have them listed but you can’t preorder at those places either. WTF! Ok, as it happens, I’m stuck in Japan as I write this due to the largest earthquake this country has ever seen, so on the morning of the 12th here (the 11th stateside) I roll into Apple.com to order one. Expected delivery 2-3 weeks. Ok, I check BBY.com. “Item in-store only”. Are you seriously shitting me? Why didn’t it say that LAST week when it was announced? What the hell sort of customer service is that. So the only allocations went to retail so the only people who can get them have to wait in line for 12+ hours so you have PR shots to show how cool your product is? Why the fuck did you even launch if you haven’t built enough to supply your highest margin channel with any goods, your fucking eStore?

Don’t get me wrong. As a tech geek, I’m thrilled when more cores, MHz and such get added, but it’s the lowest hanging fruit that required no thought in design. Fucking Moore’s law takes care of that for you. It’s expected. Apple has thrived by creating the unexpected and there’s nothing unexpected in this product.

It’s not like it was terribly hard to figure out what fans wanted from the next iteration. There’s plenty of folks who expressed disappointment on what wasn’t in the iPad 1, which sadly are the same things I’m complaining about on the iPad 2.

So with all of my bitching, why didn’t I just go buy a Motorola Xoom or a Samsung Galaxy tab, both of which have addressed what I’m talking about? Because in spite of many improvements, I believe Honeycomb still won’t be the best OS for monetization. In turn that means it’s still not the primary focus for content creators (even though it’s “winning” or soon will be “winning” on so many fronts). For a consumer like me, the content is king. And that situation partially pisses me off too because I’d like to see Android push Apple a bit harder so that it can’t sit back on its laurels and release an iPad 1.5. That said, I’m sure in the next 12-18 months I will ALSO have an Android tablet of some form or another. Probably Tegra-3-based. With more RAM, larger storage configs and SD card support and a 5MP shooter (at least) on the back with LED flash. Will it cost more than an iPad2? Probably, but marginally so and I’ll pay that too.

And yet, I’ve still ordered one from Apple.com. No, I won’t have it for my primary e-reader and general computing device to use on the Lido deck of the cruise I’ll be on in about a week. I’ll be lugging my heavy laptop with me to deal with the email I’ll be working on and such. It’ll probably come a week or two after I’m back.

And this is why I’m such a pathetic schlub. In spite of my displeasure, Apple still gets my support. I’m a Stepford wife. A hostage suffering from Stockholm syndrome.

Oddly, venting in this fashion makes me feel better. I hope that damn thing is waiting for me when I get back from the cruise.

I always wonder who’s reading this, if anyone. Mostly, I’m writing this stuff for me so I can remember it some years from now. Anyway… I digress.

It’s been an exceptionally busy last couple months at work and with the family.

Marvel vs. Capcom 3 launched and is doing almost exactly the forecasts I pegged for it nine months ago. Our preorders were spot on marketing’s goals (nice work guys). Sales has hits its numbers so far. It’ll have a challenge the next couple weeks to get to the final goal but they’re going to be extremely close if they do happen to miss (likely 98% or so). I’m very proud of the sales and marketing team as they did a great job across the board. The game team has also mostly delivered as North American reviews have been on target (something I know Seth has also helped a great deal with).

We’re ramping up for the Okamiden and Super Street Fighter IV: 3D edition… the later of which we have a lot of programs running with Nintendo on. It’s been probably the shortest, fastest ramp in a product launch I’ve ever been a part of and there’s been a number of leaps of faith that we’ve made. Fortunately, I think they’re going to pay off. I’ll talk more about that in April when we’re past the launch.

I’ve had a variety to legal and HR things keeping me extremely busy at work (confidential, natch). A ton of deals in the works with a variety of partners that I’m at the center at (also confidential). I just got back from three productive days in LA for meetings with Dorna and Microsoft. This coming week I’ll be holing up in a suite at the St. Regis for four days. Sharon will be coming out to SF to stay with me on Friday night. We’ve got a nice dinner planned at a Peruvian place to celebrate her birthday. Then Saturday morning, I hop a flight to Japan for a week.

The week after that, I’ll be back in the office for a slew of meetings through Thursday.. then we’re hopping on a big Disney boat with the family for a week. Sharon’s and and I will be celebrating our 10 year anniversary and Kaiya will be along too. She loves Disney cruises and I really couldn’t recommend them enough. I’ll post pictures soon.

On the real estate front, all of Sharon’s efforts have paid off and we have a tenant moving in at the end of this week. Should be a very long-term tenant (fingers crossed). And we’re likely to start looking for another property in the area around June or so. I’d be surprised if we didn’t have another by the end of the year.