PSA

So, I finally got around to actually buying a domain name and hosting plan. Here’s the deal: this blog is moving. Where to? http://blog.kidkonia.com/ (not up as of writing). Still will be running WordPress, and I’ll import all of the posts so nothing will be lost. But there’ll be one major change: ads. Yes, I will be running Google AdSense on kidkonia.com. Why? Well, I’d like to take some of the burden of payment off of my shoulders. That’s it. I don’t really expect to make money from it or anything, but they’ll be there.

Beware! nVidia GeForce4 MX 440

Finally went out and got Portal today (individual, not Orange Box version). Took about half an hour to install Steam and Portal together. And then what happens? It crashes. But it’s not one of those “error: xyz malfunctioned \n traceback: …” errors… it was the one telling me my computer sucks.

I have a DELL Dimension 4800, which we bought in late 2004. It’s stock to this day; nobody’s upgraded it to any degree. And it shipped with the best graphics card I’d ever had (the first belonging to a Win98 machine…): an nVidia GeForce4. It would run anything I threw at it. But today, it finally threw in the towel. It’s not broken or anything… but age has caught up with it.

Tokens and Tickets: A Critical Analysis

TOKENS AND TICKETS: A CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF THE ECONOMICS OF THE ARCADE
An Essay by Chris “kidko” Sz.

The local arcade is often a gathering place for even the poorest receiver of an allowance. But is it economically feasible to go there again and again, or even at all?

The first thing one must consider is the token. The tokens can be purchased for 25¢ each (in 4-, 20-, or 40-token sets for $1, $5, or $10 respectively) or in bulk, at 100 tokens for $20. The avverage price of a token is thus actually 15¢, after averaging those two prices (5¢ for bulk, 25¢ each). Machines require 1 to 3 tokens to operate, and return 0 to 300 tickets (able to be traded for prizes). On average, however, 1 token will return about 3 tickets, give or take.

GTD In A Nutshell (Except I’ve Never Read The Book)

You’ll notice (I’ll understand, blind people) that I’ve got a new theme for kidkonia. This is for one main reason: I hated the old one. There; I said it. The old theme put some weird border around every image I posted (couldn’t get around this!), ended up warping quite a bit of what I wrote into a much uglier format that I’d intended, and was just a general monstrosity of a theme. So I got rid of it, and went for Blix instead.

Now, on to GTD. I’ve never read the much-praised Getting Things Done by David Allen, but have just recently found many little short descriptions. I pieced them all together to get a rough sketch of what Mr Allen intended. So, let’s just walk through what I think GTD is, and how to do it.

GTD stands for Getting Things Done. It’s not that hard, you say? Well, fine for you. But for everybody else who’s having trouble doing things they wanted done yesterday, Mr Allen has more than just a few suggestions.

Start with the most important concept, writing everything down. I mean everything. Your brain can only handle so much, and the more there is in it, the worse it handles whatever’s on your mind. So David’s solution is to write everything down, freeing up your brain’s “RAM” (as he puts it). This does require you to have paper on hand, but we’ll get to that later.

From there, you want to classify things into one of six groups. First, things that take less than two minutes. Anything that does, do it immediatly. Second are Actions. These are, well, actions, that take longer than two minutes, but aren’t too long-term. Just put them on a Next Actions list and do them when you can. Try to clear your list by the end of the day. Third come things you’re waiting for. These go on a Waiting For list (surprised?). Generally, Actions depend on these. Fourth, things that are multi-step: these are called Projects. Just check on them frequently to see if you can do the next Action (step) for the project. Fifth are things that you can archive/save for later. This would include reference material, or Someday things that you want to do… well, someday, but not right now. And last, things that trash/useless/out-of-date/etc, which you can safely just throw away.