RonVitale.com

Tired

Oh, I am so, so tired.  I woke up to the alarm at 4:55 a.m. this morning and after calling the taxi cab company three times because my cab was late, I was on my way to the train station at 6:20 a.m. this morning.  I arrived in Washington, D.C. for my work trip at about 8:45 a.m. and now it's 9:22 a.m.  It's been a long, long day and I'm tired.

I'm thinking about home and I'm concerned about my wife and son.  When I left, my son had had two nights of bad sleep because of an ear infection he has.  I would be lying if I didn't admit to feeling guilty about having to leave town for work.  Last night between 8:00 and 9:00 p.m. I tried everything I could think of to help my son as he cried from his ear infection.  He had had the drops the doctor gave him, had taken the pain killer, and the antibiotics, and I even tried a hot compress.  Unfortunately, nothing worked.  I spoke to my wife and son just a few hours ago and both were in good shape.  I'm praying that my son is on the mend.  I've sent my prayers and positive energy to both of them.

I am hoping that all of us have a good night of sleep.  I'll end with a funny moment: I was walking the streets of D.C. with my coworkers looking for a place to eat when I looked up and saw the crescent moon.  It looked beautiful, hanging to the left, low in the sky.  You could barely see the moon except for a tiny sliver of yellow in the bottom portion.  About two minutes later, my wife called me and my son wanted to talk to me.  He said: "Daddy, the moon looks like it's smiling."  Ah, how cute is that?  And to think that I had just been looking at the same moon as he was hundreds of miles away.

I love and miss them both.  Peace.  I need sleep.  I'm beat.

Episode 11: Feeling Blue

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Show Notes:

--Video Introduction: You finally get to see the Magic Sock in action. Setup: Mr. Sock is in the shower and his son yells: "Daddy, it's time for the podcast!" Hilarity ensues.
-- Introduction to episode 11: Feeling Blue
--Discussion of Counterspell being the best common in all of Magic (Yes, I know that Counterspell started out as an uncommon).
--Run through of a Blue counterspell deck I had built back in March of 2002.
--Comparison of the Blue 2002 counterspell deck with a 2005 Vintage Fish deck, mentioning similarities.
--Disagree with what the best common is? Request for feedback.

2002 Vintage Blue Deck

Spells

2 Boomerang
2 Capsize
4 Counterspell
4 Dissipate
4 Force of Will
4 Impulse
1 Mana Drain
2 Mana Leak
1 Misdirection

Creatuers

3 Masticore
4 Ophidian
2 Morphling

Artifact

1 Powder Keg
1 Sol Ring

Land

20 Island
4 Faerie Conclave
1 Strip Mine

2005 Vintage Blue/White Fish Deck

Spells

1 Ancestral Recall
3 Curiosity
3 Daze
4 Force of Will
4 Standstill
2 Stifle
3 Swords to Plowshares
1 Time Walk

Creatures

4 Cloud of Faeries
4 Meddling Mage
4 Spiketail Hatchling

Land

3 Flooded Strand
2 Island
1 Library of Alexandria
4 Mishra's Factory
3 Polluted Delta
1 Savannah
1 Strip Mine
1 Tropical Island
3 Tundra
4 Wasteland

Artifact

Mox Sapphire
3 Null Rod

Sideboard

3 Chalice of the Void
2 Energy Flux
2 Ground Seal
1 Null Rod
4 Ray of Revelation
2 Rushing River
1 Swords to Plowshares

Total running time: 18 minutes and 6 seconds.

Creative Commons License: This work is licensed under a Creative Commons attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 2.5 License.

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Closing: Magic: The Gathering is trademarked and owned by Wizards of the Coast, Inc., a subsidiary of Hasbro, Inc. The Magic Sock is not affiliated with Wizards of the Coast or Hasbro in any way. To send feedback, send an e-mail to themagicsock@gmail.com. Audio feedback is welcome but please keep the mp3 file to under 45 seconds and be sure to mention your name and city/state/country.

I Should Be Writing

I was happy to hear that in the latest "I Should Be Writing" podcast (Show # 29 - Multiple Projects) that Mur read my comment that I had sent to her about copyright issues. I was on the train, listening and then I heard her mention my name and went on to read the e-mail I had sent her. Very cool. What I’ve always enjoyed about the podcasting scene is that you actually can communicate to the creators of shows. Most people doing podcasts are just like you and they take the time to get back to you. Feedback is important in that it helps you strengthen your podcast. And on the cool front, I do get a check hearing my name mentioned on a podcast. I believe that I’ve had my feedback read on three shows so far. I know it’s geeky and a bit egocentric, but I do like to participate with feedback—especially if it’s for something that I want to help educate readers on.

In the writing front, I worked on my blog recently and I started filming some of the next episode of The Magic Sock. I’ve been working on some experiments and I do have the beginning part of the show finished. Now I just need to actually film a show. That’s always the hard part. Because I’m working on adding a lot more post production work to bring up the quality of the show, it’s taking me more time to pull this off. I have some ideas for the next show, but now I need to sit down and get working. But back to writing: I called the Editorial Director of a magazine today, hoping that I could reach him concerning my not having received a contract for my piece. After speaking with him, he confirmed that my article will be out in late April and that the contract would be put in the mail to me (there was a mix up and the Marketing team didn’t have my address to send me the contract). It’ll be nice to see my article in writing. He’s informed me that it’s two pages. I’m looking forward to see the article in print.

With writing, I’m headed out of town for work and I suspect that I won’t have much free time in the week and a half. I have to start packing tonight and gathering all of my stuff together. The work trips are filled with long days (about 14 hours or more) and by the time I do get back to the hotel room, I’m ready to just collapse.

This is why I’m hoping to pull together another episode of The Magic Sock together before I leave for my work trip. If I don’t get something done, then I won’t have the ability to get a show out for another two weeks. I’d rather not wait that long to get the next show up online. The frustrating point is that I want to collaborate with others and have a guest on the show, but I have not been able to meet up with any of my Magic friends. I’m hoping that I will have better lucky once I return from my work trip. I would like to tape part of a show with a guest, but it’s just not happening the way I would like—my free time has been really difficult to pin down.

But no worries: I’ll start working on the next show and put something together rather quickly. Have a good one!

Sleep, I Need You

My brain is fried. Like chicken, but not in a good way. I would think that a chicken doesn’t necessarily feel too happy after he’s been fried, considering he’s dead. No, I don’t feel dead, but awfully tired and when I’m overtired and exhausted (soulwise), it usually bodes bad for me. I get to want to curl up inside, be left alone, and just regroup. However, that’s a bit difficult when you have a 2 ½ year old (he’s a bit older than that, I just don’t feel like doing the math).

This weekend was loads of fun. I cleaned, did wash, cleaned out one of the cards, put some oil in the car, and changed the wiper blades (I couldn’t get the passenger side on so instead of getting frustrated and ripping the damn thing apart, I went in and asked my wife for some help. Thanks sugarpie!).

Creatively, I feel about as creative as well like a blank page. I don’t even feel like writing this, but I know that I’ll have less and less time to work in the next few days so I thought that I would at least take the opportunity to jot something down. You might ask: Why am I so tired? The trip back from our friend’s house was long last night. I got in bed by a little after 2 am. Thankfully our son slept through the night but at 7:21 a.m. I heard: “Mommy, where are you?” Yep, my own personal alarm clock. Now I don’t tend to sleep very late anymore on the weekends (before having a child I could sleep to about 7:30 a.m. maybe 8:00 a.m. if I got lucky the previous night). But now my son will wake up no matter the time. See, he went to sleep at our friend’s house about 8:30 p.m. and slept for a few hours until we woke him up and then drove the 76 miles home at 12:20 a.m. Ugh. I fell asleep at one point (my wife was driving) and I might have had about 10-15 minutes of sleep. I was in the car and it was snowing (wet, warm snow) and then raining hard and I woke up, thinking: “God, we’re still so far away from home. No matter how fast we go we’re still going to get home really late.” And then today came and I woke up and felt like shit. My neck was hurting (I must have slept on it badly) and I felt like my brain hadn’t quite turned on through most of the day.

Now I’m sitting here and am trying to write. Why? Because that’s what we writers are supposed to do. Just sit the hell down and write—even when you don’t want to. And I can tell you straight up: I sure as hell don’t feel like writing right now. At least not for you. But I am anyway. My son did go to bed okay (his big boy bed arrives tomorrow—I’m looking forward to seeing how he takes to sleeping in his new bed. No more crib! My little boy is growing up). And I get this wall of resistance to writing when I’m tired like this. I just don’t want to work, or read, or do much of anything. With how I felt today, I’m amazed at how much we did get done. But I do feel like today was just one blurry, gray day.

I’ve often said that there’s no need to drink a lot and feel sick. Just get not enough sleep and you’ll have a hang over just like you would if you drank all the night before. My wife always argues with me, saying that having a few drinks is not the same as not getting enough sleep. Except for me I equate the brain not being able to function to be the same. Sure, if I have two or three beers, I’ll feel different than I would with only a few hours of sleep, but when I still have to function during the day and my brain is turned off to creativity—it’s the same thing to me. I am being just as shrouded from everything. When I’m rested and am at peace, then I am at my best. I can whip up a story idea and just go to town on writing or working or doing whatever I set my mind to. But when I’m lacking in the sleep department, it’s just not going to happen. I don’t want to be creative. I don’t want to do anything. I can’t think of that idea. I can’t even see that the idea is there and that I can wrap my mind around it. It’s just an impossibility to me.

I’ve often complained that there’s not enough time. And that is true. I wonder when I’ll get more sleep and I wonder how I can write other stories or articles or create other podcasts or change more dirty diapers, clean up more messes, do more wash, and read more books, and visit more people, and watch more movies and then the silence comes. The balance of everything coming together when you realize that you can do a little bit of this and a little bit of that, but I’ll never have enough time or energy to put all my energy toward one thing. One event. One time. One item. One creation. It’s not possible. And I wonder: Would I even want to do that? My favorite trait of my self is that I am so this and that. It’s what makes me tick. I can talk about something scholastic or literary or geeky or techy or sportsy or fatherly. I can do much and listen and be all of this, but if I don’t get sleep then I’m a very tired, grumpy man. And that’s what I was today. In order to write beyond and to get through, it’s good to acknowledge one’s frustration and tiredness. If I didn’t, then this wouldn’t be written and I’d not have fun in my ramblings.

This post was inspired by the planet Splerth (03.24.06 #109).

RSS

I’m not feeling too great today—I’ve been fighting off a cold. I feel run down, tired, congested, and just not too great. Let’s just say I’ve felt better. Again, it’s a bit of a slow news day. Not much going on in my sphere of influence that I feel like writing about.

My experiments with converting an episode of The Magic Sock into .wmv format went well. I’m hoping to do another test tonight and then see if I could obtain some comments from the person who had sent me the feedback. I haven’t had much time to work on the next show. I have some ideas, but I’ve been focusing my energy on solving the accessibility problem. What would be nice is for me to have a show ready by sometime late next week, but that’s probably not going to happen. Too much is going on for me to get that amount of work done. However, miracles have been known to happen. It’s possible that I might have some time on Sunday to work on an episode. We shall see.

Speaking of podcasts and such, I’ve been interested to learn that the iPod 60GB has been put on an "at risk" list. Typically, this is one of the first signs that Apple is going to phase out the product and then replace it with a new and improved one (maybe the 4” video iPod that everyone has been waiting for?). It’ll be interesting to see what comes of this rumor.

I do find it interesting that we’re on the cusp of a digital revolution, but I think that the mainstream aren’t quite aware of the power that’s right at their fingertips. Of course, people have been using RSS for years now and I’ve only really signed onto this about year ago. It took about 6 months or so for me to really understand why RSS is so good. But it took even longer than that for me to realize that you can using RSS not only for text but also for podcasts and videopodcasts. That’s the beauty of RSS. Simply find shows that you like, subscribe, and then click a button to get all the content you want to your PC and then transfer that to your iPod. This morning I had some time after buying some juice to sit down and watch an episode of Mobuzztv.com. Very cool to be able to switch from listening to a podcast to watching a short episode of TV quality like news.

What I find so cool about the video content is that I’m getting access to news from around the world that’s extremely interesting. I don’t have to waste time watching my local news, seeing such exciting things as what houses caught on fire last night. In fact, I can’t sit down and watching the local news any longer. I just can’t do it. It’s so filled with uninteresting content that I realize that I could be getting much more elsewhere (for free).

The jump between your PC and your TV is hopefully coming soon. The difficult thing is that the whole RSS craze is very complicated for your average user. Trying to convince someone (or teach a friend) how to get a RSS feed and then subscribe to a show is not easy at all. Of course Internet Explorer 7.0 is rumored to have seamless RSS built in, but since Windows Vista is being pushed back, it’ll be 2007 before people can use that. Right now, I think iTunes has the simplest way of using a RSS-like feed. Unfortunately, with iTunes, you need to submit your show to their store and then use the feed they give you. Basically, I have my RSS feed for The Magic Sock and then I have this really long and crazy url for the apple iTunes store for people to subscribe in iTunes. It’s a bit nuts. Yet on www.themagicsock.com, there’s a simple button to click on to subscribe to the show in iTunes or through any aggregator. But if your audience doesn’t know (or care) to use the subscribe button, you’re out of luck. Most people tend to visit a website and download the file that way—or worse yet—they click on the link and wait for the episode to load on their screen. It’s much more effective to subscribe and obtain the feed that way, but when users want the 640 x 480 version over the 320 x 240, what can you do? Not much.

Again, we’re in the early stages of all of this video revolution launching out across the web. I’m hoping that within 3-5 years that we’ll be singing a different tune. Maybe by then we’ll have a PC or a device that easily connects to your TV and allows you to download content. I’d also like to see more IPTV here in the United States. But I guess I’m getting ahead of myself. I know that this post isn’t very exciting, but I do believe that this use of technology will change the way we watch our entertainment and news. It’s coming.