The Chris Casey Experience

I had a dream last night that I’d posted a blog entry. Well, far be it from me to go against my dreams, so here we go.

Sony is in big trouble with the PS3.

Even with a $500/$600 price tag, Sony’s selling their console at around a $300 loss. Great for gamers, right? I mean, cool, you get a whole $900 console for $600. It even surfs the Internet and you can install Linux on it and play Blu-Ray HD movies and use it to stream pirated movies straight off your PC.

Yes, but: Sony, with a loss leader, is now expecting the purchaser to make them enough of a profit on other products to make up for the difference. So once you’ve loosed $500 from your wallet for a big shiny piece of plastic, you’re expected to buy thousands of dollars worth of other Sony stuff which make an actual profit. (Not just $300 worth, mind you, since Sony has to pay for manufacturing and advertising and shipping, which cuts into the profits.) This is why Sony is marketing Blu-Ray out the wazoo, since DVD discs have a very low overhead. Note that Blu-Ray hasn’t “won” the HD market by a long shot, any more than PSP-UMD discs have dominated handheld movie watching. If HD-DVD takes off instead, then Sony is absolutely 100% screwed.

Meanwhile, game developers are running around talking about how they need to sell buttloads of games to cover the development costs of their AAA titles. Sony, in their wisdom, has set the cost of entry really high. They’ve shut out the casual 2-hours-a-week sort of gamer by demanding lots of money and topping it off with the overt expectation that the consumer cough up lots more money for Sony HDTVs and Sony Blu-Ray discs and generally give all their disposable income to Sony right now. And the consumer pretty much has to capitulate, because honestly, who buys a $600 game system and then sits around playing one or two games?

ANECDOTAL EVIDENCE CORNER … My former girlfriend, now my wife, owned a Nintendo Entertainment System when we started dating. She owned four games (admittedly pretty good games, but still) and that was plenty for her. I wouldn’t be surprised if the peripheral game market was similar.

So here’s Sony’s dilemma. They have to sell a bunch of PS3s, and then sell mountains of other Sony products to make up for the loss they’re taking. Even then, Sony has set the price point to where only hardkore gamerz, indulgent parents, or trendwhores care enough to pony up the dough. Developers want to know they’re not going to get screwed by low sales before they decide to develop games for a system. Sales are already beginning to soften. Blu-Ray may end up the BetaMax of the HD video format.

My prediction: Sony, arrogantly convinced they’re still the best and their marketing plan is flawless, continues stumbling long enough for other companies to consume their entire audience. As the writing appears on the wall, Sony decides to cut the price on the PS3 and take even MORE of a loss, but by this time Microsoft is gearing up for a new console release and Sony is the old also-ran. They remain in the console market for another generation at most, attempting to Borgify all the good things of the other consoles, but their market will have evaporated. In the end, Sony releases a bunch of Greatest Hits collections for Nintendo and goes back to making TVs.

Since I’m not in enough trouble at work, I shall continue to blog about it.

There’s nothing quite so amazing as somebody who looks at a program which took months to write, somebody who was intimately involved in its creation and knows how hard you worked on it, and says, “We need you to make an enormous change, and we need it in three days.” There’s a certain beauty in that, like zooming endlessly into a fractal, layers upon layers of crystalized stupidity. Think about the opening scene of the movie “Innerspace.” Remember that? How we start out looking at a weird warped smear of colors, and we start to pull back, and back, and back, while the credits roll, until you realize we’re looking at an extreme close-up of an ice cube in a shot glass? Well, as far as this project goes, we’re still in the ice-cavern stage. The blunt totality of the dumbness won’t hit us for a few days yet.

This has happened a lot lately. Apparently we have a reputation as miracle workers, which I suppose isn’t such a bad thing because it keeps the non-techies in line. And most of the time we DO toss out solutions when people come to us with semi-trivial problems which don’t take any time to fix when you know what you’re doing. But then a project comes along which can be described in one sentence, like “Give everyone on this list a free widget.” Say, that’s a simple concept that even we non-techies can grasp. Surely it will take no time at all to implement! I’ll just whack a short deadline on that and toss it over to the IT department and WHOA WHY DID THEY START FROTHING AT THE MOUTH

Ah well. Nine times out of ten it’s a good gig. But that tenth time … that damn tenth time … :argh:

Three years ago, I was called upon to redesign the Web site of our company. We had a site made entirely in frames with sub-frames and weird naming conventions (urgh). I went in and stripped all that crap out, put a template-driven system into place, and wrote programs to convert the entire Web site wholesale. And I did it all by myself. (signed: Chris, age 4) In the end, we had a system which could be changed globally at a moment’s notice to keep up with trends. Lots of CSS and stuff, as I’m sure you’re gathering. Go ahead, gather.

After that, I started in on the design. My original idea was something bold and classic, tied together with a “stone and layers” theme (I work for a geophysical society) and a rather unique right-hand navigation scheme.

Then … it started going pear-shaped. First I made a mistake in trying to “shallow out” the site. Bear in mind the site is 7,800 static pages, divided in eight categories which I was told I could NEVER EVER CHANGE. One of these categories had a grand total of two pages in it. Another had over 3,000. Yyyyyyeah. So, clever idiot that I am, I found a flyout menu Javascript which would pop up the main categories for the bigger sections. This was great … until I realized that two of the sections had so many sub-sections that the flyout menu was longer than the screen. But, hey, the site could be changed with a touch, and this worked as an interim solution. Maybe someday I could convince them to make some major structural changes.

I am so damn stupid I’m surprised I haven’t drowned to death staring up at a thunderstorm.

Anyway, I did what I could, then put the design out there for all the authorities to see. This was … eye-opening. Y’see, I work for an association that’s run by committees. Lots of committees. Tons of them. And apparently, everyone on every one of those committees wants to be a Web developer.

So the design went this way and that way and suddenly all the managers got involved too and they all wanted their own departments to be extra special and AAARGH. It’s great when not even your own immediate supervisor will go to bat for you, even when they claim to empathize, because they have as big an agenda as any of the rest of ’em.

In the end, the site design became a twisted mockery. You’ve heard the old saw that a camel is a horse as designed by a committee? What we ended up with is a steam-driven zombified yak that requires a team of puppeteers to fart. Everyone hated it. Everyone STILL hates it. Hell, *I* hate it, and I designed the damn thing. So hey maybe if they see how awful it is they’ll finally decide to change the underlying problems so I can finally make it useful.

MY EYES ARE DRY OH I FORGOT TO BLINK THEM AGAIN HURR I HATE WHEN THAT HAPPENS

It’s now three years past. Somehow the company has lumbered along with this travesty of Web design. I’ve done what I can, here and there, trying to stay under the radar. I’ve written report after report as to how we can best improve the site. Management doesn’t want to admit they’ve whined themselves into a corner, so those reports and presentations have gone nowhere. I’m frankly embarassed by what we have, and given half an ounce of leeway I’d happily redesign the site and make it world-class. Alas, corporate inertia.

Today an internal committee, of which I am not a part, met with a prospective vendor for a new Web site backend in an initiative which they expect will take years and lots of money. I have no problem with this, because at last it indicates a willingness to finally come around. (I don’t think it requires a million-dollar initiative, but at this point I’m completely used to saving my breath.) They’ve been listening to vendors for the past two days. Big yawn. But today’s group included some Web designers who demonstrated some basic principles of design. Principles of design I was specifically told not to follow by a dozen committees and my own boss(es) three years ago. And apparently they ate it up, it’s a whole new paradigm, it’ll turn our company around, our current designer is a wart on the ass of any of these fine gentlemen. Excuse me while I go spit on the lump of flesh who made our Web site. What a talentless waste of perfectly good carbon.

So how was your day?

There’s a mini-controversy going on at my work about people reading each others’ blogs and using personal information for leverage in the complex and subtle intrigue of office politics, or else just being creepy stalkers. I started looking over my previous entries and realized that, hey, I don’t have any juicy information here that anyone could use to blackmail me or others at my workplace. This post is an attempt to rectify that. My blog is for everyone. Don’t want to disappoint the creeps!

• Man, there’s this one guy at work. You know the sort of guy I’m talking about. Yeah. Man.
   
• My best friend at work is a woman. And we’re both married! For that matter, one of my best friends in college was a married woman too, only back then, I was single!
   
• At a previous employer, I knew a person who was a complete jerk. He’d just walk by me, and I’d think, “What a jerk!” I didn’t say it out loud, though, because that’s rude and I didn’t want to hurt his feelings. But I was sure thinking it. LOUDLY.
   
• There are a lot of attractive women at my work. No joke there. Just bragging.
   
• You know that one person? Totally sleeping with someone. Probably their spouse, but you can never be sure.
   
• People who read other people’s emails without their permission should be killed with a pitchfork.
   
• I went over to my recently departed coworker’s desk and took her ergonomic mouse pad. Up tha powah!
   
• Despite all evidence to the contrary, I’ve recently come to believe that some of the people I work with may actually have genitals. I try not to think about that one too much.
   
• I once ate an entire slim young gay Thai hooker. No, wait, what was it again? Oh yeah, an entire pie.

A friend of mine is leaving (fleeing?) the company, which is sad mostly because I wouldn’t have categorized her as a “friend” until six months ago even though we’ve been working in the same department for two years. Oh, she’s perfectly nice and all, but it takes a while to crack that work-acquaintance shell. Maybe it’s the litigious nature of society. It’s hard to josh around with someone if you’re afraid they’ll take something you say and twist it into you giving them your house as part of a settlement.

“Nice day, isn’t it?”

“You’re just saying that because I’m BLACK!”

“… you’re not black.”

“You’d notice, wouldn’t you? RACIST!”

And next thing you know you’re having to stay one step ahead of Tommy Lee Jones. Yeah, screw that. Easier just to smile and nod and be absolutely non-committal until you can pick up subtle clues that another person doesn’t want to drive a pair of scissors into your eye. For a normal person, this phase takes a week or two. For me, it averages a year and a half.

Anyway, she says she’s off to “Dallas,” which I think was a TV series once. I wonder whether it’s closer to Hooterville or to Petticoat Junction.

I can keep it a secret no longer: I’m starting my own side business designing Web sites for small businesses. I have far too much Web design “in me,” especially while working at a job where the management doesn’t seem to think much of my ideas (which are, of course, brilliant). You can only update static pages and send out friggin’ mass emails for so long before you start thinking, “Say, I have eleven years of experience doing the professional Web design thing; perhaps I could leverage this somehow to help fill the money bin behind the mansion. Getting kind of sparse in there.”

Of course, these days it’s not enough to hang out a shingle or wear a plain white T-shirt with “WEB DESIGNER” across the chest in block lettering. You also need connections, you need plans, you need bigger better deals *snapping fingers repeatedly*. I’ve spent the better part of two weeks trying to write a business plan as a result, and let me tell you, a more boring and repetitive document you’ll never see. It’s like taking a grand idea and disassembling it, like a music box, until you have a sad little pile of concepts which individually seem mundane. “Companies need Web sites; I provide Web sites” is where my head was to begin with; simple but effective. “Companies need Web sites, and so I do this and this and this and this and this and contracts and hosting and marketing and five-year projections and pricing and blah” takes all the fun out of it. I mean, it’s nice to have an explicit road map and guarantee that I won’t end up in the gutter and everything, but where’s the charm?

I get the feeling I’ll be saying “Where’s the charm?” a lot the next few weeks.

I went to work for a couple of days this week. BOOOORING. Thus I shall amuse myself by recounting random things from the cruise. Follow along if you wish.

• We met a nice young couple from Finland who unfortunately had unpronounceable Nordic names. Seriously. Like some sort of exotic bird call rather than sounds created by any human mouth. So my wife and I started privately calling them “Rolf and Inga.” If by an amazing coincidence one of you happens to be reading this: Even if we did ever learn your names we’d still call you “Rolf and Inga.” Sorry. It has momentum now. You’ll never escape it.
• A big “thank you” to the tour guide lady in Belize whose name was something like Ngosi for introducing the delightful phrases “You better Belize it!” and “UnBelizeable!” to my wife’s everyday vocabulary. No really. Thank you SO FREAKING MUCH.
• Despite all medical evidence, it is demonstrably possible for a human being to eat for 16 hours straight.
• Apparently I’m allergic to Neutrogena Fresh Cooling sunblock. I’ve been wanting to scratch the rash on my legs with a gardening trowel for over a week. Good thing I have the sand flea bites to distract me.
• My wife gets a little huffy when I take pictures of an attractive woman’s butt. Who knew?
• I couldn’t tan if you painted me with tan house paint. Burn, sure; tan, no.
• Street musicians in the Caribbean seemingly have no trouble when strange people walk up and start playing their instruments. Shipboard musicians, on the other hand, freak out when anyone comes within fifty feet of their stuff.
• Don’t try the conch nuggets. Get anything else. Trust me.

Ding, cruise is done! We took the Carnival Valor from Miami to Grand Cayman, Roatan Island off the coast of Honduras, Belize, and Costa Maya in the Yucatan, plus a couple of days at sea in among all that. We had a few panic moments (“Where’s our tender? What do we do now? What did that guy say about poisonous snakes in his thick accent?”), but all told it was 98% fun and relaxation, 1% confusion, and 1% severe sunburn.

We kissed a stingray, got kissed by a dolphin, visited Mayan ruins, toured Belize City, saw dance and music and culture, ate enormous quantities of food, spent hours on our balcony, lumbered around in gaudy shirts taking pictures of everything like a couple of tourists, and otherwise enjoyed the hell out of ourselves. Unfortunately, we had a room directly below the restaurant, so we heard a lot of THUMP THUMP CLOP CLOP CLOP tap tap SCROONCH while we tried to sleep. I also had some sort of weird allergic reaction to the spray-on sunscreen, which gave me tiny red itchy bumps all over my calves and stomach. Ah, the price we pay. Plus the four grand or so. At least nobody got sick.

I go back to work day after tomorrow. Thank heavens I added a few extra days to recover; I’ve been in a fog since Sunday night. I can’t even come up with a funny way to end this post. (So maybe I’m back to normal after all. Har har.)

Now everyone can see how much I suck. Hooray.