Should I Pace My Lifestyle to Games of Chance?

I really like games of chance. I enjoy playing card games like Texas Hold'em with my wife Phyllis and my good friends Ilio and Keith. On occassion, I even enjoy going to a big time casino like in Atlantic City or Las Vegas and shooting some Craps or playing a little Black Jack. I play the lottery at home and with my good friend and colleague David M.

In all these games, I would of course love to win but I don't expect to win. I don't plan my budget around winning. I don't pace my lifestyle like I am going to win. Why not?

It's because of course none of these games of chance are predictable at all. I also am not an expert at any of these games either making it even less likely that I would plan or pace my life around doing such games. That would be absolutely insane.

How do I pace and plan my life? I do it just about like everybody else. I have a plan that I think is reasonable. I follow the plan based on my skills and needs and what I think is truly attainable. Of course there are set backs and I adjust as needed in an agile way.

Nintendo really gets it…Sponsor your own hack / crack event!

Yesterday I had the pleasure to take my son Zachary and his best friend Michael to a really cool event. Nintendo and ToysRus had teamed up to do a nationwide Pokemon meet up event.

The idea was that kids come to the store armed with their Nintendo DS devices. When we arrived there were probably 200 kids in the store with their DS's and pokemon games running. You walked up to counter and each kid was quickly given two sealed character cards with a special code attached. This code talked to a local wifi server they had staged in the store and allowed the kids to download two new super charged characters -- Manaphy and Electivire.

So what was in it for both companies? For ToysRus obviously the hope is that you are in the store and buy more product (and indeed we did). For Nintendo obviously they can sell more product too but there were other beneficial behaviors that I observed.

Kids of all ages (6 to 18) were interacting not only with their new characters but several were making deals and exchanging other characters from their devices over the wifi connections in the store. Of course there were also many discussions about specific game strategy and tactics. Many of the kids were discussing how the DS system interfaced with their Wii systems at home and uploading and syncing characters on their devices to the home systems.

Overall the event felt like a bricks and mortar viral event that was truly authentic!

OpenID and related XFN matters

I have to say that I have been a fan of OpenID since our leadership in the development team (Luke and Ken) both turned me on to it. The concept is a fantastic advance and beside that I have long been a fan of a client side solution for identity management called Roboform.

The latest article on the O'Reillly site is very interesting in that it points to an even further advance using XFN to create what is called a social graph using XML. I really like this idea as social networks proliferate. One of my favorite applications that me and my CEO have taken a liking to on Facebook is the Interactive Friends Graph application. It allows you to dynamically see all your friends and your relationships and connections between them and you. I highly recommend it!

I am looking forward to seeing what more fun can come from OpenID and XFN.

Our new grandson Zane

Our new grandson Zane

Originally uploaded by sl_morgan

This is a collage of our new grandson Zane (and other members of our family Allison, Emily and Emma) made with Ript. He was born on September 1, 2007 and weighed 9 and half pounds and was 22 inches long.

Zane my new grandson is born

My first and only grandson -- Zane was born this weekend on September 1. I wish I could share pictures with all of you but i haven't got any yet (come on I need my Flickr uploads).

So as a place marker I thought I'd load up my Ript page about the baby name Zane from babynamer.com. Allison and Skip (Zane's parents) had quite a time choosing my grandson's name but I am very happy with their choice. I definitely wasn't crazy about their second choice Tyson.

Zane originates from the great heritage of the name John which means God's grace.

The other vitals. Zane is huge -- nine and a half pounds and 22 inches long. Mother and grandson are doing great. Pictures to come soon.