Everything I want to share about 2008

2008 is almost done, so that means it's time to look back, and make mention of whatever I want to share about this year.

Plusses
Health-wise I'm doing okay. I'm definitely more tired than I used to, but I'm sure that's thirty-something going for me. At least nothing's the matter more serious than taking a couple of pills.

Seeing my friends get married on a tropical island was a personal checkmark for me. The very fact I had the freedom to do so, is nothing less than a total luxury, I agree. But it earned me plenty of new stories, new acquaintances and invigorated relationships, some of which were from a long time ago.

Probably my greatest professional successes this year have all to do with recognition, acknowledgment, and gratitude. People enjoy and appreciate working with me and for me, which is more than I can hope for. It means I'm a good team mate, a good team lead, and whatever I want to have everyone around me do, makes sense. My way - which is not so much demanding, as it is making people to believe themselves that my way is best - works dividends.

Minuses
Stuff that happened this year I could have done without, included getting registered by our resident traffic authorities, getting stuff busted for no good reason, and of course having all these traders and financial institutions panicking and crashing the stock exchanges, again for no really good reason. (so you do bad business now GM... you did bad business before... don't blame credit crunches for your own mistakes...)

But I think the most epic fail this year has to be the following... I always prided myself with having great perspective and insight into people around me. Yet I completely missed people's breakdowns, break-ups, depressions and all that, left, right and center. Shows how much of a friend I am. The only excuse I can think of, is that I've been given leeway to take on a lot of professional responsibilities, and somehow that makes people think I'm all work and no play.

Learning points
I feel sad, but also fortunate that I can support other people during their grief. And I hope I can show as much dignity and calm when such grief arrives at my doorstep. For some reason, I didn't have (or didn't take) my chance at this before, and I feel bad about it. This feels like redemption.

I've learned that agendas are important, and putting the right points on it even more so. It is up to me to make sure that other people's agendas contain the items I find important. I've learned that asking questions, especially on record, is a very potent weapon in discussions. That means I've got to master asking the right type of questions to achieve my goals. Regarding both points, I firmly believe no person is actually unwilling to talk about a particular subject, as long as it happens on their terms (at least that's what they think), and as long as they are given ample time to think about it.

Next year
In 2009 I need a lot of resolve around the home, institutionalize my relationships, make my professional concerns important to those who should. It will help I have deferred some of my responsibilities next year. Money is less of a driver I guess this coming year. I'm more looking at experiences, good, bad, evil, beautiful and everything inbetween. Things that have to be done before the start of the fourteenth B'ak'tun...

Eat, take pictures and play cards

How to Sit in a Restaurant.

Solo, at the corner of the bar. The food's the same. You can look out over the restaurant, and your server for the evening will be the bartender, who'll be more than happy to provide you with info on all things hot waitress. If you're dining with a special someone, ask for a table in a corner away from the kitchen, and sit next to each other, not across, to up the intimacy factor, says Todd English, a chef and restaurateur. Make a 7:30 reservation. It's just before the crunch, so adrenaline will be pumping and service should be optimal.

. . . Take a Group Photo.

Standing on a balcony or chair. Shooting down makes people look up, and looking up makes people look better, says Danny Clinch, a New York City photographer. Have Phil tell the story that always makes Aunt Cheryl spit water, or ask each person to tell a joke. People will listen, relax, and forget about the camera. Shoot just before, during, and after they laugh, to capture a series of natural looks. One more trick: If they're sitting, ask them to lean toward the center of the group, and as soon as they start, click. More doing and less thinking. Wait too long and it'll be too posed.

. . . Sit On a Couch for a Group Picture.

It doesn't matter where, just lean forward. You'll have to look up, and putting your forearms on your knees will hide any gut, Clinch says. Leaning back will cause you to look down and across your chest, giving even the most ripped cover model some unsightly chin business.

. . . Sit At Your Regular Poker Game.

To the immediate left of the most aggressive player. Money moves to the left, and you want to see how he acts before you play. If that turns out to be at the head of the table, even better: You can see everyone and snag maximum legroom. Once comfortable, your goal is to isolate Captain Macho. Since he's prone to play weaker hands, you'll have your chance. Just be patient for a decent starting hand and raise three to four times his initial bet to drive the pretenders out, says Daniel Negreanu, professional poker player. It might not look great, but a 7-8 of the same suit can turn into gold after the flop. Plus it'll be hard for opponents to figure out what you're holding.

[Also check out the Men's Wisdom pages on menshealth.com]

Funny quotes from 2008

From the Funny Department:

• "BS, M.S., Ph.D: bullshit, more shit, piled higher and deeper" (stole it from Ben's mom)

From the world of epiphany:

• The more money you have, the less you actually need spend.
• There are no goals. Just be in the moment.

From the department of cheesy, but still good:

• A real friend is one who walks in, while the rest of the world walks away
• Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results (Einstein)

From the department of DRM MUST DIE:

copa Oct 15th 2008 11:51AM: giving a metaphore for EA's DRM practices.

"This clearly is not a solution to piracy."

You clearly know nothing about running a business. I run a convenience store, and know a thing or two about stopping criminals.

Every time someone shoplifts beer from my store, I implement policies that make it less convenient for paying customers to buy shit from me. I require customers to show me two forms of ID, and give me their Social Security number before they can buy stuff. Also, I have a guy who stands in the parking lot and blocks their car for five minutes before letting them leave.

Unfortunately, my store's annual revenue has actually dropped $60,000 in the year since I started implementing these policies. Also, shoplifting has increased 50%. When I caught one of these criminals, he claimed he would have paid for the beer, but he just didn't want to give me his social security number. I hope he get ass-raped in prison.

Anyway, the revenue drop at my store just illustrates how unchecked shoplifting is going to destroy my business. Obviously, the solution is to implement more draconian policies so I can eliminate shoplifting completely.

Starting tomorrow, I will gut-punch all paying customers at the point of sale. That will give the shoplifters something to think about.

The fallibility of the attractiveness grading system

You probably heard of it before. When you go out you scope the room and identify the most attractive people in the room. You order them, give them a grade, and then proceed to pick one of them up - as pretty as feasible, thus as high grade as possible. Very attractive people are scored higher, ugly ones score low.

What is usually said that happens, is that people will more or less stay within their own grade, give or take a point. If you're a 9, you can hook up with anyone up to a 9, and even 10. Likely a 9 will not date someone lower than 8. But a 6 should not realistically be successful with a 9.

The problem I have with this, is there's no objective measuring system that says "this person is a 4 and this an 8". Only one person determines how attractive a person is, and that person is you. Of course many people could share a similar opinion about how attractive someone is, but that's not enough reason to just take someone else's opinion as yours. It could very well be that one person's 6 or 7, is another person's 9 or even 10. It all depends on what you're looking for.

Ideally, and probably instinctively, people start scoping the room by doing lightning quick reviews. I'm fine with that. But when it comes to dating, will you let the overall "metacritic" score influence your move? Or do you stick to your own review?

The State of Sports in 2008

Sports in 2008 have taken a leaf out of the WWE handbook of "shock and awe" plot twists. From Giants upsetting undefeated teams, to championships pulled out from the skin of your teeth, these are the most shocking events in sports this past year. Try to beat that, WWE booking team.

• The Upset; or the Rise of the Giants: An undefeated New England Patriots team comes into Arizona to pick up the one win that will make them the most dominating team in the NFL ever. Except for some divine reason their offensive line couldn't stand up straight, their linebackers couldn't pull down a quarterback, and balls were caught with helmets. The Giants won, and became the most powerful team in the league for the rest of the year.
  
• Women of Gold: at least for the Netherlands, the Olympics would have been a bust, had it not been saved by the fine ladies in hockey, swimming, and very surprisingly water polo. Makes you wonder where all the Dutch men went. However, all of these successes were achieved in team sports. Individually the Netherlands had mediocre results, and it showed beyond a shadow of a doubt that the low countries do not have a superstar to rally behind. Thankfully the Dutch Female Athletes, tall, proud and full of team spirit, made it happen.
  
• The Superstar; or the Franchise: Usain Bolt destroyed athletics competitions for the forseeable future, for holding back on a sub-9.50 100 m dash, and boasting about it loudly in cameras and television screens world wide. The IOC, in its best Vince McMahon-impression, gave the Jamaican an official warning, which Bolt seemingly underwent with a definite indifference. Of course, he made sure that future Olympic 100 m dashes still have drawing power, because if he would have done his utmost and ran 9.48 or thereabouts, no one would ever be able to beat the record, killing the event forever.
  
• The Great Hope, and the Disappointment: For about two weeks the Netherlands thought it had a chance to win it all, and emulate what a previous generation did before: win the UEFA European Championship. Oranje made short work of the World Cup holders from Italy, beat the French soundly and were looking to walk over the dark horse Russians in the quarter final... except things didn't turn out that way, leaving Holland with another promise unfulfilled, and millions of Oranje fans dejected, after having been fooled yet again.
• The Soap Opera: Formula One always markets itself as the glamourous, jetset, top flight of automobile motorsport. But this year the circus had more twists, turns, Dusty-finishes than the WWE, which is saying a lot. They had a boss who was caught in a sex-scandal, systematically erased results to manipulate the standings, and ended up with the most dramatic finish of recent history, when Lewis Hamilton just pipped Massa for the championship in the final 500 m of the Brazilian GP. If someone was still entertaining the notion that F1 held the highest form of integrity, I seriously doubt their sanity. I mean, this very same plot line was held to the letter in WWE circa 1998-2001.
• The Kids You Hated At School: For a U.S. Ryder Cup team, which was so extremely keen on making themselves the underdog for this year's competition ("sob, sob, we're never going to win this, we don't have Tiger, boohoo, yadda yadda"), they looked much too smug after actually beating the Europeans.
• The End of An Era: Roger Federer is no longer invincible. That's a good thing. I don't care what people say about watching tennis brilliance when he is on TV. HE IS FREAKIN' BORING.
  
• Extracurricular Activities: On the other side of the net, the WTA is finally using its sex appeal to win viewers. Too bad that the women crack apart (Sharapova, Ivanovic, Jankovic etc.) once they won once. Thankfully just about every player in the top 50 has a magazine shoot ramped up to give them some income when they're nursing their injuries.
• The Curse: The Cubs still haven't won a World Series. The Red Sox now have two.
  
• The More Things Change...: NBA Finals 1987: Lakers vs. Celtics. NBA Finals 2008: Lakers vs. Celtics. So much for expansion.
• A Sign Of Armageddon: It is bad for your sport if the one individual in that sport the general media is talking about, is not a champion (More Detroit Redwings hoisting Stanley Cups. C'mon guys... share the wealth!), and not its most talented player, but is the class clown. Sean Avery, from his stick waving antics in the NHL Playoffs, to his public burns of Jack Bauer's daughter and Stacy's Mom, was generating more publicity than the league he is playing in. Yes. All 30 teams in it, including all the other players on each of the 30 team rosters.
  
  I give the NHL four more years.
  

State of video games in 2008

I got caught. I actually shelled out for a PlayStation3 and (re)joined the console owning army this past summer. Hell, you need to justify that widescreen TV anyway, right?

Truthfully only a couple of games interest me for the PS3. Metal Gear Solid 4 is one, every bit the elaborate military stealth thriller it promised to be. A truly involving story, interesting characters, and well paced action. It was the first game in a long while to actually scare the daylights out of me. Try playing the boss level against Laughing Octopus in the dark, and try not to get too spooked.

Grand Theft Auto 4 is another, which is actually a surprise to me. I thought I wouldn't like it too much, with all the hype surrounding it. But it is the best depiction of a sandbox game yet, with an environment which is so convincing as a depiction of New York, I recognized locations when I was there.

And I'm sure Gran Turismo 5 is going to be a great game, but Prologue is an ideal (if slightly contrived) way of demoing the game up front. And I'm happy to note that with just a couple of practice laps, I can get to be second fastest driver in the Netherlands.

On the PC Windows front, not a lot happened for me. The Sims continues to sell, but it is getting extremely evil with all the spinoffs, theme packs, expansions that a true Sim fan will have to buy. Getting connected with H&M and IKEA is a stroke of genius, but who in their right mind would pay $29.99 for 60 new pieces of Sims furniture?!

The two main games for the PC were Red Alert 3 and Spore. The latter used to be a shoe-in for release date acquisition, but the DRM mess really put it in the crapper. I mean, it is an interesting game, with a unique premise, but it is not good enough to warrant such a draconian measure to protect it from piracy. It's like having 15.000 dollars worth of alarm systems on a 7.000 dollar car. And each time you get into your car, you get hit in the nuts.

Which leaves Red Alert 3. Back in the old days, you only needed to equip your game with one or maybe two attractive women, and you would create a new fanboy addiction overnight. RA3 gives us seven women. SEVEN. That's a bit overkill. And you could argue if you want Jenny McCarthy on your computer screen in this day and age. But Gemma Atkinson made the best use of a white dress yet seen on any screen. The game was enjoyable too.

And the soundtracks this year... absolutely fantastic. I actually discovered new great music because of the soundtracks of these games. But just go back to my 2008 music review to see what I'm talking about.

Best I liked in music in 2008

There was only one trend this year in music worth mentioning, and that's the rebirth of the white female singer. From Amy MacDonald to Duffy to Gabriella Cilmi to Colbie Caillat and Sara Bareilles, we kept seeing more and more new, young, fresh faces coming to the fore. Most of what they put out there, is actually good, and I in my foolish mind took Coco as the next big thing (which didn't really happen). But it also showed that people didn't bother much with anything that wasn't hot, young and attractive. Or a trainwreck like Amy Winehouse. Or a lipstick lesbian like Katy Perry.

If you wanted to make big buck$$ as a singer, you need to license your music to video games and movies. Better yet, make an original soundtrack just for a game. You'll never hear your music on the mainstream pop stations, but millions of loyal fans will follow regardless. Case in point: David Hasselhoff.

One last thing. I'm having a bit of a Rihanna hangover, mixed up with a Beyonce overdose. I can do without them for a while, thank you very much.

Band du Jour: Paramore - I was temporarily inclined to name Alphabeat this year's up and coming act, but then I remembered Alphabeat is a freakin' poppy band who had far too much laughing gas for their own good. So I choose the band with the exact opposite character instead. Just listen to Misery Business and dare not agree with me.

2008 MVP: Rihanna. Basically she had more hits this year than anyone else. It will have to be, considering she's considered the hardest working woman in pop music. And she ain't shy in mixing it up either. She single-handedly saved Maroon 5's otherwise lackluster comeback, kept us and Jay-Z dry from the rain in Umbrella, and gladly rips everybody else's samples just because she can (Please don't stop the music, Live your life).
Honorable mentions: Coldplay, for not stinking the joint up. IT DOESN'T MEAN YOUS GUYS ARE OUT OF MY DOGHOUSE, but they actually succeeded not pissing me off this year. Viva La Vida is actually not a bad album.

Top mainstream singles of 2008:

1. Madcon - Beggin
   
2. Adele - Chasing Pavements
   
3. Alain Clark - Father And Friend
4. Coldplay - Violet Hill
5. The Ting Tings - That's Not My Name
   
6. Sara Bareilles - Love Song
   
7. Leona Lewis - Take A Bow
   
8. Jason Mraz - I'm Yours
9. Jack McManus - Bang On The Piano
10. Duffy - Warwick Avenue
    

Top latin singles heard this year:

1. Daddy Yankee - Impacto
   
2. Wisin y Yandel - Sexy moviemento
   
3. Jorge Celedon - Vida es bonita

Most embarassing song I sang along to this year: Viva Hollandia. But hey, we beat Italy 3-0 then. So there.

Best use of a song in a commercial: The Reebok NFL commercial, Vashti Bunyan - Train Song.