Twev1701.net

I’ve been thinking about something the better part of a week now. It’s been mulling around in my head most of my waking hours, and I couldn’t make any sense of it. So I decided to outsource my question. Before bed on Saturday night, I posted my question on Facebook: “Once you turn a hobby into a vocation, can it ever become a hobby again?”

Here are the responses I got.

Kristen Williams: Nope because it becomes a chore not for enjoyment. You may enjoy your vocation but it will never be a hobby again.

Rebecca Dashnaw Mendez: Very well said Kristen!!! Couldnt have said it better!!!! BUT…. there may be a way to twist your warped mind (& I mean that in a good way of couse!!) around reasoning to MAKE yourself to believe you can!!!!

Kristen Williams: If one could make a hobby a vocation and still enjoy doing the same thing in their down time I would be very happy for them. I would want to know the way to do that and follow their recipe.

Dave John: I’d imagine it’s a bit like marrying a woman….take that however you will….
=)

The reason I was asking myself this question can be summed up in one easy word: computers. Computers have been a hobby of mine since I was about 7 years old. It continued that way until about 2007. By then, i/o Computers was open for a little over 2 years, and I was totally burnt out on computers. I was so burnt that I took a 90 day leave of absence from the company. When I came back to the company after spending some time over in England, I thought I was ready to jump back in. I was wrong. My heart just wasn’t into it anymore. The business lasted until the end of that year, at which time, we shuttered the business. The following month, being totally disgusted with PCs and their problem, I went out and bought a Macintosh. It has been my main system ever since.

Then I got to toying with the idea of opening up a computer business again this spring. I came up with a name for the new business, registered the domain, secured hosting, registered with all the major vendors, got an EIN, and had business cards made up. I set a opening date of Q4 of 2010. All that needed to be done was to finish the website. Then the voice in the back of my head started talking to me again. So I really want to get into fixing other people’s problems in my free time? I mostly did this as an extra source of income for my family, but at what cost was I going to do this? Back in the day with i/o Computers, i was typically putting in an extra 40hrs a week on the business. Days off were never days off, and vacations rarely were. But things are different now. It’s not going to be a partnership, and I can set whatever prices/hours I wanted to. This started to quell my anxiety.

Then the voices started getting louder.

I loved spending hours on the computer before we opened up the business. It was my favorite hobby. Since 2007, I have had very little interest in computers. These days I honestly rarely sit down at my desktop system. As a matter of fact, my PC is off for weeks at a time, something that was unheard of but 4 years ago. Since I turned a hobby into a vocation had a sullied my once loved hobby forever? On the rare occasion that I do get time to be on my computers, I either feel A) Guilty that I’m not doing something else or B) Bored. Having these feelings, do I really want to put myself in a position where I will be forced to do this several times a week?

Then there’s my family. I love coming home from work, playing with my son, and spending the night with my family. If I do open up a new business, I am going to be sacrificing that time with them for time with my clients. While I will be making some extra money for us, do I really want to do it this way. Then the voice starts telling me that I am the boss and I make all the rules.

At the end of all of this, I am still left with a question without answer. Maybe this is because there truly is no right answer.

Last night when I came home from work I decided that since I was alone, I would finally go thru the task of sorting through my digital archive. We’re talking about 4 large spindels of CDRs and DVDs that I have burned over the years. I initially set out on this task because I was looking for a few files. While I did not find all of the files I was looking for, I did come across some very unexpected gems.

I found 2 anime songs that I thought had been lost forever when my 250gb hard drive crashed years ago. I also found a CD containing all of my old websites. This was great because I now have almost a complete very of all my pervious designs; something I have been searching for along time. As an added bonus, I had found an copied over directory from my remote web server back in 2003. This was a goldmine find! In this directory was a installed copy of NewsPro, which was the CGI/PERL script I used to use back in the day for my blog. Sitting on my laptop in bed at 4:30am, I was able to pull out about half a dozen ‘lost posts’ from 2003! Back then I was horrible about archiving my website and every time I did a redesign, I ended up losing my entire archive. In the past few years, I have been painstakingly trying to reconstruct those posts thru found files and archive.org screenshots. So, finding a file that containing 5 posts from February 2003 that I never even knew existed is awesome! After reading the posts, I even remember writing these.

They have been added properly with their original date and time codes into the Twev1701.net archives. There are a few picture links that are missing, and my next task will be to track those down.

Now I just need to find the ultimate honey hole which would be a file containing the very first posts from Twev1701.com, circa 2001.

Sitting here in my car on lunch I usually just let my mind wander. While talking with Jerry on Twitter I realized something funny. Our Twitter names are the same names we used to use when we both first started on AOL back in the 90s. I have been going by the online handle ‘Twev1701′ since late 1994. I’m not when Jerry got onto AOL, but for as long as I can remember he’s been ‘Jerrwe’.

In a day and age where people are tending to stray away from online handles and go by their real names, it’s interesting that we still use our old handles from 17 years ago. I find that fascinating.

Last night was one of those nights where something totally out of nowhere comes and throws your world on end. This was a good thing.

Jess and Jackson went to bed early last night and I was left by myself. Not being tired, I decided to go someplace I haven’t been in a while — my PC. It’s been off for a good 2 months now, and only recently was turned back on. Before I could do anything, Jerry and I started talking to each other on Twitter all over a post I made about having some ‘me time’. This lead to a conversation about how we used to play games all the time and how we really missed those times. This graduated into a conversation about how the old games we used to play are superior to what is out there today. Next thing I know, Jerry is talking to me about a mod for Doom he saw called ‘Aeons of Death’. I honestly wasn’t intrigued until he told me it combined the weapons and enemies from all of our favorite old games into one awesome mod. Now I was more than interested. Twenty minutes of downloading and some command line work later and was playing the coolest mod I have ever seen in my life. How cool is this mod? Cool like I was up playing until 4am cool. Not only that, but Jess and Jack both took a nap this afternoon and guess what I did? Yep! I played ‘Aeons of Death’ for a good 90 minutes. I am totally hooked.

Another positive outcome of this mod was that Jerry and I did nothing but talk about games all day. This is something I can honestly say hasn’t happened in almost 8 years. I miss that. we’ve even planned a get together for a nice gaming day/night with some good retro titles.

I’m so immersed in the retro gaming again, I downloaded a build editor tonight and am going to start designing maps again for our Deathmatches.

I know iCal says it 2010, but it feels like 1997 all over again.

Just in case anyone has been sitting around wondering, “Gee, Trevor’s birthday is less than 6 months away. What in the world could I get him that’s cool, affordable, and doesn’t require me to leave the house or even see him?” Have no fear citizen for I have the answer for you. Behold!

Not only can you order it from the convenience of your own home (or smart phone), but you can have it shipped directly me to that you won’t have to even see my ugly mug. No awkward social interaction required!

So today (4/9/10) was the day that Apple, and his highness Steve Jobs, held a keynote unveiling iPhone OS 4.0. I was getting ready for work at the time of the keynote (1pm EST) so I wasn’t able to be like the legion of pathetic people who sat for an hour or so hitting the refresh button on all of the ‘live blogs’ covering the event. Instead, I did the normal, sane thing which was to check out a few stories on my break at work, and then watch the entire keynote in MPEG-4 glory after I got home from a full day of work. Hey, call me what you will, but a refresh slamming fuck-tard I am not.

So while I was reading some really poorly written articles on Engadget during my break, I started to get excited about what features were being brought to the iPhone with OS 4. Then when I was showing my wife some of the features about 3 hours later on my dinner break, the poorly written articles were updated to simply contradict themselves.

Now I should stop right here. This is not, nor have I ever made claims that this site is one of literary excellence. I freely admit that some of these posts make no sense, the grammar ain’t that great, and I have more speling mistaks then anyone else. I don’t pretend to be something I am not. This is a personal blog where I spout whatever might be on my mind at the time, and then throw up a few pictures of half naked women. That is what this site has been like since 2001, and it’s not changing anytime soon. Get over it.

Now, back to those poorly written articles by a site that is an ACTUAL ‘journalism’ site. I got frustrated by the sudden contradictions so I decided to get it from the horse’s mouth myself and just watch the keynote myself when I got home. I just got done doing just that. My first reaction was humor, since the original, non-updated Engadget articles were right the first time. My second reaction was HOLY SHIT!! THIS IS GOING TO BE AWESOME!!! And then my third reaction set it. That was a total ‘Did Steve Jobs just do what I think he did?’ Let’s look into that reaction more closely.

Steve led off the keynote with some updates on the new iPad. If you’re curious about my thoughts on the week old device, you can get my opinion here. I am still of the firm belief that said device fits a certain niche. I am also still a firm believer that it is currently nothing more than a large iPod Touch. And lastly, I still believe that it is useless to me without multitasking. Once day I would love nothing more then to run my business using just an iPad. However, today is not that day, and tomorrow isn’t looking too good either. I watched the iPad info with simple amusement. It would be later in the keynote that the irony would really sneak up on me and bite me firmly in the ass.

After his little iPad speech, Steve them moved onto the iPhone and more importantly, the iPhone OS 4. He then started to rattle off a list of new features.

• Multitasking – FUCK YEAH!!
• Home Screen Wallpapers – Cool!
• Folders for Apps – FUCK YEAH!!
• New Snow Leopard-like app dock – Cool!
• Touch to focus while taking video – FUCK YEAH!!
• 5x digital camera zoom – Cool!
• Unified Mail Inbox – Cool!
• Connect to Bluetooth keyboard – FUCK YE…HUH?!?!?

That last feature stopped me dead in my tracks. I can finally connect a Bluetooth keyboard to my iPhone? This means that I can finally write proper emails and work on documents on Google Docs without using that tiny, onscreen keyboard? For real?

Yes my friend, it was indeed real. And that’s when I realized that Steve Jobs had just made the first generation iPad totally obsolete to me. For the cost of $268 ($199 for an iPhone and $69 for Apple’s Bluetooth keyboard) I now had a unit that can take pictures, video, make phone calls, works on WiFi, works on 3G, and can sync with a Bluetooth keyboard. Sure, the iPad has a much larger screen and a longer battery life, but for all functional purposes, they just turned the iPhone 3GS into the ultimate portable device. I can no longer think of a single reason to buy this generation’s iPad. In fact, I plan on driving down to my local Apple store before the release of iPhone OS 4 this summer, buying the Apple Bluetooth keyboard, and using it to run my business on the go. It now literally does everything I need it to do.

And of course, just to kick the poor iPad when it was down, Steve announced that iPad owners have to wait until fall to get their update. What a kick in the nuts too all the people who just dropped $499 (starting price) on an iPad.

With every news outlet spitting out iPad news for the past 4 days, I felt I needed to chime in on the subject.

I assume you know what I am talking about by referring to Apple’s newest product, the iPad. If not, head on over to Google and throw the term ‘iPad’ into the search box and prepare for the flood.

So here’s the long and short of it for me. Did I get one? No. Do I want one? Yes. Do I want this iPad? No. Can I explain more? Certainly.

The iPad to me is my inner geek’s dream come true. Why do I say that given I already have an iPhone, a Mac and a laptop for all my computing needs? For that, you need to go back to Google and enter in the following search term – ‘Star Trek PADD’. Go ahead, I’ll wait here.

See? The fictional computing devices that Geordi LaForge, Data, and Picard have been using is finally a reality. Not since the advent of the flip cell phone has a product come to market that so closely resembles a fictional piece is Star Trek equipment, not only in looks, but function as well.

So why am I not running to my nearest Apple store to secure one? That’s an easy question to answer and it can all be summed up in one simple word – multitasking. That’s right, multitasking. This is something the iPad cannot do. Writing that document in Google docs and get an email? I hope you saved that document before you check your mail because you have to close out the browser to do so. Want to check Twitter really quick? Be prepared to drop everything else you’re doing in order to do so. See a pattern?

Now I will fully admit that this is the current experience on the iPhone, the very device that not only do I swear by now, but am writing this very post on. However, this is okay. This is a small, portable device totally intended to be a phone first, and a computing device second. Right there I fully accept there will be not only some limitations, but concessions for it’s size. Now for something as large as the iPad that is literally nothing more than a computig device, I would expect at least half of the functionality of my laptop. However, all we’ve been given right now is a lage iPod Touch. Is this a bad thing? Of course not. This will fill a need for a great many people. However, I want more.

Wanting more was the very reason I waited until the 3rd generation of the iPhone to come out before buying one. I refused to spend that much on a phone, iPhone or not, that did not take video. Then when Apple released the iPhone 3GS last year, I was out the following week buying one for me and one for my Blackberry loving wife. Neither one of us have looked back since.

So in conclusion, is the iPad and awesome device? Of course it is. But I am patient and can wait until a unit comes out and does exactly what I need it to do. And knowing Apple, I’ll be punching out more than a few blog posts via my 2nd generation iPad sometime next year.