How We Use Tablets (Hint: At Home)
January 17, 2012 By Leave a Comment
3 Lessons From Monopoly
January 17, 2012 By 4 Comments
While my kids are playing Call of Duty or Minecraft, I chill old school and play Monopoly on the iPad. I play at the Hard level against three computer AI opponents and I win over 90% of the time, which I like. I actually think I’ve learned some stuff, too.
1) Focus & Mind Your Business
I usually win just by controlling one or two property groups; the Orange, Purple or Light Blue. The game AI makes the computer buy up everything in sight, which I use to my advantage in trades. If I have extra properties, I usually mortgage them right away. I just want one or two color groups where I can immediately build three houses.
2) The Dice Don’t Matter
There’s a lot of luck in Monopoly and it makes almost no difference to me at all. The dice are what they are. I don’t count on the dice so I can buy a property; just as often as not, I’ll do trades to acquire the properties I’m focused on buying. You can get what you want , if you’re focused on really getting it.
3) Adapt To The Rules
One thing I do to keep it interesting is to mix up the Houses Rules. Sometimes, make it so there’s a ton of cash in the game — extra money for landing on Go plus money for landing on Free Parking. Sometimes, I make it so there’s almost no cash — starting with a lower bank and no money for passing Go. I still win consistently because I adapt how I play the game to fit the circumstances.
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Interview: Karol Gajda & A Minimalist Lifestyle
January 15, 2012 By Leave a Comment
I have a slew of interviews that I haven’t posted yet. Here’s one I did with Karol Gajda from the website Ridiculously Extraordinary. Karol talks about his journey from owning a BMW to living out of a backpack…and living his life. Karol hasn’t rejected ‘business’; he’s embraced it.Very interesting guy and lots of stuff in here will challenge you, no matter what you believe.
Big D
November 6, 2010 By 3 Comments
Three weeks ago, if you’d told Lauren or me that we’d be living in Dallas, Texas at some point, we would have assured you that it would never, ever happen.
It’s more or less a fluke that we came to Dallas at all. When we left New Mexico, our plan was to head to Dallas to take the kids to the State Fair of Texas and then head down to Austin. We had it all planned out. We’d arrive on Wednesday, because that’s the day the Fair has reduced admission if you bring cans of food. So, eight cans of beans or something plus about $20 and we were going to give the kids a few hours of childhood memories.
Then, my Dad passed away and that pushed back our move bv a day. No Wednesday arrival but maybe we’d get to the fair later in the week and then we planned to head down to Austin. We liked Austin, we’d lived there before and the Keep Austin Weird lifestyle seemed to suit us since we’re — ya know — weird.
We never made it to the Fair.
We found a Studio 6 hotel we liked near Dallas, though. It was small and cramped with two adults, three kids and two cats but we’d known it would be small and were prepared to deal with that for a month or two if we had to. We thought we’d be in the Dallas hotel and then move down to one in Austin.
One week ago, I thought we’d be staying in the Dallas for another month and then we’d be heading south. I’d paid for the hotel a month in advance and was settling down to work.
Then I went to church last Sunday. I’d found a Unitarian Universalist church that was close enough to the hotel and that was doing stuff for Halloween. This was a big deal to the kids, who wanted to see what ‘trunk or treat’ was about. I wanted to light a candle for my Dad.
I’ve drifted in and our of UU churches for about eight years now, in Austin and then Southern California and a little bit in Albuquerque. During times of real personal upheaval a few years ago, going to the UU church was a real help and it was pretty strange to me how in many cases the message delivered there was exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.
So last week, I went to light a candle for my Dad and it happened to be the week they were celebrating the Day of the Dead, complete with an alter with sugar on it. The kids and I went to church, sat in the back row and I lit my candle and the kids quietly sang along with hymns. The message was about prayer and how prayer isn’t winning the lottery. They played Eric Clapton’s song Change The World early in the service and the CD skipped and everyone laughed. The man sitting in the row next to me said, “We have a lot of fun here.”
After the service, I talked to that man about the church and how we ended up there; about having to move from New Mexico and going to Dallas for the fair and staying in the hotel and so on.
And — that man happened to have a townhouse that he’d just moved out of…and he offered to rent it to us, really cheap, for a couple of months. After the service, I told Lauren and it almost didn’t seem real. It was too…perfect. The place sounded like exactly what we needed; affordable, three bedrooms, right in the city.
Something else had happened in our time in Dallas…we discovered we like the city, a lot. It’s a big, modern city with great grocery stores and restaurants and lots to do.
So, we went to look at the townhouse and it was even better than I’d imagined. Lauren walked around with a grin on her face. The kids ran around and picked out rooms. That was on Wednesday, just three days ago. We moved in on Thursday.
And now we live in Dallas.
Controversy & Perfection
October 23, 2010 By 3 Comments
Flickr image by annais
I get in controversies sometimes because I don’t shy away from getting into controversies. Here’s a new one — it’s a blog post that doesn’t name me but it’s about me and I show up about 100 comments into the discussion. Even if you like following my controversies, this one is pretty confusing if you don’t know the context.
I’ve been fretting about it for a couple of days but now I’ve decided that it’s just the price I pay for pushing the envelope sometimes. If I let it slow me down, I’m doing anybody any good..
I’ve gotten so many nice emails & twets about this brouhaha and they far outweigh the negative ones. I got one surprising, thoughtful negative one and I appreciated that, too. (It was from someone kinda well known who I respect a lot and I didn’t think I was on their radar, really — hence the surprise.)
“Some people will like me and some won’t. So I might as well be myself, and then at least I’ll know that the people who like me, like me.” — Hugh Prather
Here’s what I’m stuck with: I’m me.
I’ve got plenty of faults. I’m not afraid to take risks and I screw up frequently. I don’t like being misquoted or misrepresented and when that happens, I say so. I’m not afraid of a fight. I don’t go down quietly. I can be off-putting. I can be divisive. Sometimes people find that my negatives outweigh my positives. I can go on like this for a while but that’s who I am and I’m coming to grips with the fact that it’s okay.
It’s perfect, even. That means accepting the reality that I’m perfect. You’re perfect, too, by the way. No, really — you are. It’s really hard to accept and humans are the only things on the earth that even give the idea of perfection any thought. Rocks and kangaroos and ferns never worry whether they are good enough, much less perfect. They just do what they do. And once you accept that, you can accept that perfect doesn’t mean it can’t get better. Weird, I know.
If I’m going to worry about putting myself in the best possible light or just being comfortable in my own skin, I think the smart bet is on comfortable. I write this in the hope that this message finds someone who needs it. Maybe even me.
Richard Stranahan
October 13, 2010 By 2 Comments
My father passed away yesterday. My brother Ken was with him at the very end.
My Life As Screenplay
October 9, 2010 By Leave a Comment
I have a new blog where I tell mostly-true stories from my life in script format — go visit MyLifeAsScreenplay.com to read ‘em.
The Next Episode….
September 27, 2010 By 1 Comment
I’m sitting in a Starbucks in downtown Los Angeles with Jack, who came out in this trip wipth me. Our train ride out was extra long. We kept Albuquerque close to 2 hours late and then around Flagstaff the train had to stop for another cowpoke of hours because we got word that someone had gotten killed by a freight train on the tracks ahead. This all meant that rather than getting into Los Angeles at 8am, we rolled in at noon. But that worked out better for us than that poor dude in Flagstaff.
taufht the VFX course all day yesterday; great guests and really great, motivated students.
Today, Jack and I are kicking around LA all day. They are predicting record heat – 107, they say. Our hotel room downtown has no air conditioning.
We move in a week and I have no seminars on the schedule right now. I’m moving into that “writing” portion of things. That probably means I should write today.
At Least You Know You’re Alive
September 25, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Crossposted at Question The Rules | | Flickr photo by Behrooz Nobakht
I’ve been going through a rough few weeks but in tough times, you sometimes hear people say “Well, at least you know you’re alive!” and I know exactly what they mean.
Here’s what today was like foe for me; my wife woke me up at a little before 7am because we’re having a moving sale since we have to be out of our house in a week. We tried to move our couch upstairs to sell but we couldn’t do it and gave up, leaving it wedged sideways in our hall. We did the yard sale, sold the two huge, heavy TV sets (yay!) and the couch (the new owners will figure out how to get it home) and a few smaller things. Now, I’m at Starbucks using their Wifi and I get on a 15 hour train ride to Los Angeles in a couple of hours to teach a visual effects class tomorrow then another 15 hours back to Albuquerque for the final pack up before we go to live in a hotel for an unspecified amount of time.
But at least I know I’m alive!
I’m not stuck in a rut. Every day is a new adventure. It’s a bit stressful but it’s also exciting and I’m making sure to keep it fun and interesting. There’s a lot of drudge work in packing but I’m keeping my eye on the new places we’ll be exploring in about 8 days.
Adventure is a choice. If you aren’t risking anything, you probably have very little to gain. I certainly understand the drive to dig in and hold onto the what you have but I also know that staying in a holding pattern eventually makes you run out of gas.
The Passenger
September 8, 2010 By 6 Comments
Yesterday, I found out that my eyesight has degenerated to the point that I can’t drive a car anymore.
I went to renew my driver’s license and I had hoped that I’d be able to squeak by without my eyeglasses. That was my hope but when I stuck my forehead on the eye test machine I knew there was no possible way. Every line was a total blur. I couldn’t make out anything.
I’d lost my glasses at some point so I left the driver’s license place and went home to look for them. After they didn’t turn up, I decided to just bite the bullet and get a new pair. I went over to the optical center at Walmart to get an eye exam and a perscription, thinking I’d go to a one hour glasses place after that.
The eye exam didn’t go well.
My current normal video is 20/100, which means not good. How not good? It’s not legally blind but apparently I don’t have good enough vision to get a job doing government work. Ponder that.
In order to get a driver’s license, I’d need 20/40 and even with glasses, the best I was going to do was 20/50. This is all related to my diabetes and it’s gotten worse in the year since my last eye exam.
Worse, though, was the eye doctor saying, “You need medical help, not an eye exam at Walmart.” That little bit of concise brutality came from the eye doctor whose office was Walmart, remember.
This all has big implications, of course. I’m sorting those out now. I did 100% of the driving before for the family; Lauren never drove. When we went out yesterday, the kids expressed much confusion. “Ummmm — why is Mom driving?” I could also go into the ironies feeling like I’m going blind two of the most important things I do are photography and filmmaking.
But it seems like I have is diabetic retinopathy and that is treatable. I haven’t been getting treatment and with our health care system being what it is, now I have to figure out how I’m going to get that treatment.
And — I’ll need a ride there.
