Shoddy UIs I'm callin you out!

Me, when Daddy Apple, Grandma Google (not pictured)
and Mommy Microsoft change their UI

Apple is awesome at needless User Interface updates, though occasionally some useful features come out of their reckless restructuring. Finger gestures on their sweet-sweet touchpads is probably my favorite enhancement in the last decade. To contrast, Windows uses tried-and-true formulas and seems to think that there's no use in changing something that people already know. Remember the first time you saw a Windows (Start) key? Game changer. Then came the right-mouse-button key, and...nothing ever again to the keyboard. There are merits to innovation vs staying the course, but between the cracks are some poor choices for UI. Now, before I get started, I'll say that there are probably built-in solutions or separate applications that solve some of these issues, but the average user isn't aware, and that counts as poor UI to me.

You'd better have a good memory if you want to replicate that

Layer restriction: In designing my email signature, I wanted to copy and paste from my inbox, the main Outlook page. This is 2 layers back, from Signature (top layer) to Compose (1 layer down) email to Inbox. but since the dawning of time, Windows won't let you select the screen more than one layer back. I can move the signature box out of the way to see the composed email below it. However, I can't move the next layer (Compose email) or interact with it. I see this interactive layer restriction in many applications, even this very website when uploading media.

Another example: say I want to upload an image, but forget where the cursor is and corresponding text. Add on the fact that the photos I'm looking for are buried under a 10-folder directory path. Too bad, can't look without closing out of the upload screen. Why is this still the standard right now? At the very least, you should be able to make layers transparent at-will.

Most apps let you drag and drop between your file explorer and content creator, which is a sweet alternative, but you still get trapped in situations like Outlook.

File management on your smartphone: Why-ohh-why do I have to download a separate app to look at files on my phone in Android? Want to do the same on iPhone? Forget about it. On numerous occasions, I've put new music on my iOS/Android device, only to have whatever music app not recognize the song. Unless I've downloaded a file management app (why isn't this installed by default?), there's no way for me to check where the song went and begin a diagnosis without connecting it to a computer. Don't even get me started about needing iTunes to do the same for your iDevices. It's a silly form of restriction that Apple customers just deal with. A $1000 phone should be able to do anything and everything I want it to, damnit!

Traffic lights: Think about it, folks. We've shaken our fists at drivers who gun the engine through a freshly-red light. We've been the maniacs who are doing it, too. While drivers aren't blameless, ask yourself the question: how long is a yellow light yellow? The answer varies by intersection, not even block, city or state! There is no standard for something that is a daily danger (double-d for short. Actually, no one has ever called it that.) The burden is on the driver to make this split-second decision, when we could just implement something like a flashing yellow light that pulses 4 times before going red. While we're talking about good ideas for traffic lights, B.C. has flashing green lights that mean a pedestrian has activated the cross walk button, and so be on the lookout. Federal mandate, pronto!

Side note: that ad off to the right...

Ad placement in on Youtube: Using anything besides Chrome means I have to run Youtube without AdBlocker. Before the FCC ruins it and makes us all pay Comcast a Youtube premium, the company needs to pay for that data-gobbling with advertising, which I have no problem with in general. The problem is the 5-, 10- and even 30-minute advertisements that will begin in the middle of your hourlong video on the 110 reasons why Star Trek Discovery is the greatest show ever. We can all sit through a minute or so of commercials, but there's no rhyme or reason when these display; sometimes the videos stop mid-word!

an oldie, but Goldeneye had atrocious controls. Move with the stick
and aim with the D-pad or C-buttons. Gross.

Lack of customizeable controls in at least 50% of videogames: Why is this still a thing? If the controller has a trigger on it, why is the shoulder button above it the one to fire? Maybe the developers have thoroughly thought out the perfect control scheme. Good job, but there are always people who want something different, and might even get turned off by controls that aren't so great. I've written about this before, and there is also a collective of disabled gamers who have created their own controllers that don't work properly if a game doesn't have customizeable controls. There is just no good reason for this not to be a standard requirement. Unassigned buttons are Step 1 in designing controls, FFS!

Logins: I've already written an entry about password recovery. The gripe is when you put in the wrong info and the website doesn't confirm whether the login or password is what's wrong. This is probably a security feature, but is also frustrating because I personally have about 50 different accounts that use one of 5 email addresses. Even at my workplace, the handful of applications have different login schema, whether that's first.last or email or id#. Employers should read my blog!

Anyone can wave off these gripes as petty first world problems, but the businesses responsible for these had a goal of creating a good product that's easy to use, so there's that, too.

What about you: At work and in your personal life, how many accounts do you have that require a login? There's a poll under this post!

Grey Friday: Know your brands

Dudes. Chicks. Calm that consumer rush. This is a hard one, cause I try harder than the average Joe to be frugal and not financially wasteful, but I do get an extra blood rush during November's consumer push. It's no secret that Black Friday deals are businesses' chance to get rid of old inventory. While that's no problem in itself (that's a good frugal direction to be headed,) be careful of overloading on junk.

My best advice for thriving frugality is to know your good third party brands. Spend a few minutes on Amazon or CNET to learn some known flaws with big brands or product lines. For example, none of the LG tvs I've seen are not very good at handling black levels...shadows, facial hair and the letterbox lines all look "neon black," instead of having varying levels of depth. Samsung has a track record of terrible customer service. Stores used to use different types of cables to sell different tiers. HDMI (the current standard) for Samsung and Sony, and component cables (extremely limited in color depth and resolution) for Vizio and Spectre. I haven't seen this practice for at least 5 years, though. The stores may have realized that some people don't have the $200 extra to get the name brand; or maybe they realized it was a shitty underhanded practice. Ultimately, custom settings can make your cheapie TV look much better.

And please, please adjust your picture settings...a 2nd-tier TV is very capable of looking like the picture on the left.

Sometimes, foreign brands are as cheap as third party, but have amazingly high standards. For headphones, Beats are overpriced and bass-heavy, and you're better off getting the German-engineered Sennheisers and spending the extra cash on something else. Logitech, Swiss, makes great, affordable products that last forever. In the realms of computers, Acer and Asus, Taiwanese, sells laptops with better hardware than HPs that cost almost half as much.

I won't weigh in on fashion-related Black Friday sales because part of my frugality means I'm crisp, but not current *brushes off shoulder.* I also won't say what stores to avoid, though 'doorbuster' sales make me imagine the worst, and I'd personally just order online at my own pace. Our favorite retailers are doing sales all month long, so there's no need to skip out on your loved ones Thursday night after the Martinelli's is still washing down the third piece of pie you crammed down. We aren't drinking and driving, after all.

If you're only looking for a few things, the amount you save in not paying tax on Newegg.com, or the free shipping from many sellers might cancel out the lower-priced local deal if you factor in your personal time, gas, and hospital bills associated with stick fighting over the last SNES classic at store price. (Damnit, Nintendo, just make more; it's not that hard of a concept.) Year-round, consider DealNews, TechBargains and woot for daily deals; there's no reason to pay big box retailers' rent, line Shell Oil's pockets with money, and miss out on your cousins' cracked-voice rendition of Poker Face when you can have stuff sent to you.

Muh-muh-muh-mahhh

Last warning, stores will probably try and getcha with one of their store credit cards that gives you 5% cash back or 10% off every purchase. Often, you can find a better deal on the items themselves online with a little bit of searching, and just not spend the 5 or 10% in the first place. That means you're not paying interest on it, or forced to spend said rebate at that very same store! Besides, I have a hard time cancelling unused, unneeded lines of credit, and that doesn't help anyone! As always, keep your spend demons in check, and think about that debt you have to pay back at the end of the month for that chocolate robot frog that was 30% off. Have a good Black Friday, but more importantly, a great Thanksgiving.

Working PAX West 2016

Spareboard XA. That's what I am this year! The line-managing, person-directing, go-getter that works 40 hours over 4 days. Normally, the Exhibition Hall Assistant (XA) is usually assigned to a booth, like Capcom, and handles one or several of the tasks mentioned above for a dainty 5-hour shift. What I'm doing is hanging around, shootin' the breeze for a half hour, and then being dispatched out for crowd control. Day one's tasks were telling people not to run when we opened doors, escorting e-sports celebrities and finally managing the line -- NO CUTS--for Destiny's latest episode. The hardest part about everything is being on your feet so long...There was also a 1000 piece dragon puzzle that was put together by the end of the day. I'm lucky enough to have avoided any crises. Trying to catch a bus out of Downtown Seattle was the most nerve-fraying experience of the day, but what else is new?

Day Two was mostly managing the line for a very thankful Bungie as they did a Destiny tournament. The booth had a 3' x 3' ghost made of MegaBlocks, as well as a Warlock cosplay that caused some foot traffic management on my part to minimize congestion. The day was interrupted by a massive headache that aspirin just wasn't a match for. When I went back to the e-sports players, I actually watched them play my current PC favorite: Heroes of the Storm. I run the game on my 6-year-old laptop, and it was bonkers to see the best players in the region play on dedicated gaming PCs. Very smoothness. Pretty graphic. Wow.

I had him in my sights

Capped off Day Two meeting Darth Maul and Capt. Picard, and playing Street Fighter V. Ohh yeah, and there was a new puzzle!

Humans created the holodeck before the Enterprise...

Day Three I hit my stride. Most of the day I was assigned to Nvidia, with their 3 VR stations. The big draw was a 30-minute 4-player Star Trek mission where the players entered the bridge of the Enterprise. This means that a line of 18 people is a 3.5 hour wait with prep and rotation times. The issues were that people were trying to make a line to get into the official line, which we couldn't do, but all the issues of, "I got here first," were solved quickly and quietly. The last day of the show, a woman came with her family, and was almost in tears when I turned her away. It turns out she had followed them around for the first 3 days of the show, and wasn't into video games. She was a huge Star Trek fan, and when I discretely made an exception, she burst into tears and even hugged me before sitting down the 5 hours to get her chance on the bridge. I started tearing up, too and I really didn't know my best memory of PAX 2016 would be letting someone in line. 

Yeah!

I also ended up taking over for one of the zone leaders during their lunch break. It was the perfect opportunity for something to go wrong: turns out AMD had picket signs and was staging a protest in front of Nvidia's booth. I waved off what I thought was the problem, but apparently I missed it. This leads me to one of my largest misunderstandings about my role at PAX. During training, they referred to us as problem-solvers and used the word 'problem,' all over the place. I picked up my definition of problem from 10 years of teaching and would equate it to fighting students, repeated issues with turning in homework, or a natural disaster. This fake protest and annoyance registered as a problem, and people asked me if I had reported it to our supervisors. Eventually it was properly escalated and the two rival companies made up.

Ensign Mawz saw an opening on da bridge

This time, I met Capt. Picard again, and we played the first Halo on the original Xbox, with the largest controllers ever.

The picture is brighter because a Flash was used

Day four's morning meeting was met with some disappointing news about the show that I can't share with you. I can tell you that my Spareboard XA shift means that I only have my lunch break to see interesting booths, but should be resting during that time. This means that I'm working during most of the swag opportunities, and have almost no chance to get free stuff from the show. I'm still glad I did PAX 2016, will get paid for it, and even made a friend on the last day!

How Frontier Communications is going to screw me over

Credit score; your financial IQ. It's one of those things that's useful in a handful of contexts, but is prized a little more than it should be. Luckily, I do not plan on taking out a loan in the next 10 years, as I'm flexing frugal muscles for the long haul.

Here's the deal. When I moved into my own place, I figured I would stick it to the larger cable company by going with the smaller guy, Frontier Communications, and I will pay for my insolence. They advertise a $39.99 per month 3Mbps service on a DSL connection with no contract, which is a pretty good deal. Some people get free installations and $40 is all that they pay, which I was told by the representative. After I asked him to sign me up, I was told that there was a $100 fee for a technician to come out to your house and hook up the router, which consists of connecting 2 wires. Well, smart me knows shit about computers, so I opted for the free self-install kit. I was excited for about 10 seconds until the agent saw that my apartment complex wasn't eligible for the self-install kit, but because it was the only option, my fee would be waived. Sweet! 5 days later, the friendly technician comes in and hooks up the connection, telling me that the aforementioned 3Mbps was based on how close you live to the company's station. Shucks. Ahh well, internet is crucial, so I would take whatever I could get at the time.

Installation waived? False.

I used the service for a day and found the speeds so unbearably slow that I scheduled Comcast to start their service the very next day. A week later, when my 30x faster connection was up and running, I called Frontier to cancel the service. I was prepared to pay the $40 monthly fee, chiding myself on how un-frugal it was to have two internet connections at once. 2 weeks later, my first bill arrives for $200.92. Also, the Frontier technician depot is a 15-minute walk from my house, and the $10 shipping/handling fee for the technician bringing the router is almost hilarious.

I called Frontier 4 times, using Skype, another service that doesn't work as well as it should, and 3 of those times, the agents couldn't hear me. I also had to laugh at the absurdity of having connection problems with a communications company.

On the 4th try, the agent was able to hear me, and after 45 minutes, told me that the entire $200 would be prorated for the 6 days the service was active. I have to wait 3 billing cycles to see the adjustment. That's when, 3 weeks later I get the following:

"Please be advised that your account is seriously past due in the amount of $200.92. Your failure to respond to this debt will initiate additional collection proceedings, which may include referral to an outside collection agency within 10 days of this letter."

This company is going to report me to collections? Aww, hell no. I called them back, asking if there were any notes to when I cancelled the service, and whether or not the amount was to be prorated. Nope. When I explained myself, the representative, Dean, told me that he would get the installation fee waived, and that I would see the changes in 3 billing cycles. I recorded that 25-minute phone call to use if shit gets anymore real.

In 2 weeks, it will have been 5 billing cycles since the madness began, and 4 cycles since I talked to Dean.

Since I work customer service, I have to bring up a pet peeve of mine. A lot of consumers will have an issue with a lost package or damaged item, and the company I work for will fix the mistake and apologize. A lot of people will say they got shitty customer service. I would like to say that they had a shitty customer experience. The service I provide is exemplary, and the customer service at Frontier was also nothing but polite agents, and, as I mentioned, a very nice technician. My customer experience, however, with Frontier Communications has been a fucking nightmare. I cannot dis-recommend a company any more than Frontier. Run at all costs. Save yourself, don't try and make a stupid statement like I did.

Login screens need to move forward.

Whether it's 5 minutes to kill or the last 2 minutes until nuclear meltdown, we've all been stonewalled by logins. Everything requires an account now, and some these are completely useless. Pinterest is a prime example: you need an account just to browse pictures and other peoples' hobbies. Rullly? On the other hand, I'm glad my financial sites check the IP I logged in with and ask security questions. My main gripe is some of the unnecessary stress that passwords cause us.

My Outlook box at work demands I change my password every 3 months. I can understand executives wanting this feature, but when most of the company uses email in place of chat (to discuss team projects and customer orders,) the information just doesn't need that level of protection. As a matter of fact, between sick days and high turnover in the entry-level positions, a team having to wait for one person to get his or her password right could be a problem. For me, frequently changing passwords often causes the ohh shit, I need to check something before I need to go home, and forgot my password situation. This leads me to my password retrieval gripe.

Digging up or fixing your forgotten password is a nightmare. After your 3 failed attempts because you logged in standing up and your wrist was resting on CTRL, what's the next step? Call IT, which is already closed for the day.

Some sites will ask your security questions and personal info before either resetting the password, or triggering a reset password email. That is a good thing. Attention companies: automating password retrieval is the way to go! Having to call someone to get a password for your login is silly, unless you work somewhere with incredibly important data. However, even those places have the James Bond random number generator key chain thinggies that make the password reset call unnecessary.

This site gets it!

Also, I recently got burned for not knowing whether I had an account or not. I was applying for a new position within my company, and forgot my password. Now, I have 10 memorized passwords, which is probably more than the average Joe, but still less variety than I should. Anyway, I used the forgot password link, entered one of my 3 emails, and was rewarded with this.

Seriously, fuck off. If? I'd done this with 30 minutes before I had to head to work, and waited around like an asshole to know whether or not I'd already created an account under that particular email. I don't know if that's more or less infuriating than that 5-minute wait for the password reset email when you actually do have an account.

No one has screwed me over as much as Microsoft, though. My hotmail account was hacked 10 years ago, and there's no tech support number to call - in fact, someone took notice of this and posted a number as a Google result. I got halfway into the call when someone with an accent asked me for $69 and a credit card number. Bless that guy and fuck Microsoft for not having a normal retrieval process. They have a list of about 50 security questions to answer, with your personal information and even a open answer part with "some of the last subjects your emails were about." In theory, this is genius, but if someone hijacked your account and sent out 100 emails, then whatever you guess isn't going to work. And surprise! It didn't. Instead, some clever thief capitalized on Microsoft's inability to satisfy a common issue.

As much as I rail on Apple, I'm really glad that they've tied most of your logins to when you unlock your phone. Most of the frivolously protected sites/apps with logins being opened with a swipe works juuuuust fine.

I'm not saying get rid of logins altogether, and I'm not calling for sci-fi eye scanners on every device, but some companies need to realize just how much a pain in the ass their accounts are to access.

Games of 2016: Winter p2

January: Wolfenstein (PS4), Zheroes (XB1)

I was ready to talk shit about this dumb-looking white guy, too...

Wolfenstein: New Order might be my favorite fps game ever. It took me a few hours to discern it from your average FPS game with another white male lead. The setting is great, though; the graphics are stellar, the controls are very responsive, and the two gimmicks work just fine. I'm referring to dual-wielding and leaning. The former works just like it should, adding a longer firepower, which is especially devastating with two shotguns. For the lean mechanic, you hold on L1, and can quickly crouch, lean out from cover, and even raise up on your tippy-toes to fire over cover with the movement stick. Finishing this game with my buddy left me feeling so uber-satisfied, and I'm only glad that there's a lot more content waiting for me. Wolfenstein's cinematics were able to make me give a shit about that white jarhead soldier because the writers were on point with context. BJ Blaskowicz Blazkowicz is one of the last Allied soldiers, after Germany wins WWII. This characters has existed for 30 years or so, since the first Wolfenstein, but your character's ethnicity is important because he passes the Aryan test, allowing him some natural infiltration abilities.

There's a side romance story with one of the characters Anya, which at least has the visual payoff of a couple sex scenes. I think this is acceptable because romance in movies and games is often a waste of time. Live action relies on the actors' chemistry, but rendered scenes rely more heavily on good writing, which is a lot easier to control. Also, in a mature game, if you're onboard with the violence -- ohh, there's LOTS of that in this game-- then you've earned the right to see some T&A. So often are we subject to bullshit romance without any payoff more than the couple finally being able to show their affection publicly. Big whoop.

This boss, which you actually fight, is about 3 stories tall.

The game has giant scary mechs, blasting out garbled German in robot voices, sadistic high-ranking officers, and a milleu of vibrant characters that react off of your stoic main character. Bethesda, id and Machine Games did us good on this one!

Zheroes is a comic-style beat-em-up game, free for Xbox Gold members last December. The game's two characters are styled like Mr and Mrs Incredible. There's nothing particularly great about this game, but I can't complain about a free game with couch co-op!

February: Star Craft II (PC), Dishonored (PS3), Guns Up (PS4).

My favorite Christmas gift was Star Craft II. I sure as heck haven't played it much, and all of that has been multiplayer skirmishes. Another mode is an objective-based survival mode, which has you building a base and protecting nodes from being reached by the enemy team. I hope to write more about this game as I play more, but it was worth mentioning that it, like every other Blizzard game, is rad! My main complaint about this game is that the units are so small that they feel insignificant. I've always been more of a fan of Warcraft III, where your armies are a little smaller, along with heroes that level up. Starcraft II's quickly-dying units mean there's a lot of back and forth with base and roaming armies, rather than WCIII's spawn-explore-micromanage abilities gameplay. Great game, nonetheless.

Gorgeous, and the palette isn't supposed to be vibrant.

I think I'm playing Dishonored at the wrong time to fully appreciate it. It's another Bethesda game, right after I completed Wolfenstein and had such a stellar experience. Dishonest is gorgeous in it's depressing and blandly-colored European slum backdrop, and plays very similarly to Bioshock with a stealth element. You chase an objective and clear out enemies with special abilities or weapons, and loot while dodging traps and listening to awesomely-voiced NPCs. The platinum trophy for this game sucks, though, because it diverts you from letting loose. There's a trophy for completing the game without any abilities, and the other trophy is to complete the story without alerting anyone. Both of these encourage you to COMPLETELY play off the beaten path. I understand I'm complaining about something totally optional, but team in charge of these trophies could have been more creative in their design. I'm glad I got off the hook without insanely time-consuming multiplayer-based trophies. Fuck multiplayer trophies ALWAYS.

Guns Up, like Gems of War, is another free to play game with very-accomplishable trophies and short gameplay. You spawn army units that follow their own (often terrible) AI to destroy enemy bases. Each round takes 3-5 minutes, and your profile gains levels and munitions--the in-game currency to buy better units and upgrade your base. You do the latter to survive waves of attacking units, and get permanent fixtures for your base, as well as more munitions, for surviving beyond 2 minutes.

As you're deploying units from your ever-creeping truck, you also pick up specials to cast on the battlefield. These include a decoy, which makes the enemy divert their fire away from your units, to a napalm or missile that does heavy damage to either buildings or moving troops.

That anti-air tower protects against missiles, bombing raids,
paratroopers and napalms!

The game's creative point is that you completely design your base, adding and upgrading buildings. If you want to place your tent, which spawns soldiers at intervals, at the entrance and keep all your sniper towers near your main base, you can do that! You can add fences to divert their units, and explosive barrels next to cover in hopes that stray bullets will make it go boom! Between rounds, you can place and angle the buildings to your liking. When you're ready to see your base get destroyed, you hit DEFEND and an endless wave of increasingly-stronger enemies shell the shit out of your base.

Bring it on, gaming industry!

Now that developers are delivering complex and realistic contexts for us to experience, I have a couple gripes with modern gaming.

Thanks for the three choices...

One thing that makes me roll my eyes is games that don't allow you to assign your own buttons/controls. I appreciate the developers carefully thinking out a scheme that works optimally for most players. However, I think the characters' actions are designed before the input. This means that unassigned, custom controls are something so painfully simple to implement in control options that I can't think of a good defense for not including them. It's like only having a red house available as your option. At some point after the house was built, there was a stage where the house wasn't painted, and passing along the burden of painting it is something easier for the builder to do. 

That's what daddy likes...PS4 lets you
manually reassign for the system

Except I see at least half of the games I play with no customization. Even more insulting is when a PC game does this. To tie this gripe into something more meaningful; there was a story of a disabled gamer who was able to rig his own device to play games. The catch was that he required those games to have assignable buttons. So, not only do I look at shooters that use the shoulder button as fire instead of the trigger with absolute distaste (I'm looking at you Spec Ops: The Line, and Uncharted), this guy is getting robbed of these games entirely because game studios are taking a "Daddy knows best," approach. Well lay off the crackpipe, Dad, R trigger/R2 is the only way to fire! Lack of customizable controls doesn't bring any benefits, but including them does. Gamers who really like your control scheme will use it; others like me may lose favor; and people like the McGuyver of Disabled Gaming don't get to experience some games at all.

Yep.

The second tired thing in gaming is the white male lead. There are articles about it here, and PBS Game Show did an episode about it. That doesn't mute my voice, though. I'm tired of playing in worlds with only white people. I live in Washington State, for crying out loud, I know what white people look like. Some of my favorite games are lead by white characters: God of War and Uncharted stand out. At least God of War's Kratos was voiced by a black person, and the Uncharted series delivered really interesting, flushed out characters, and also had foreign languages.

But I knew Master Chief was white before the absolutely unnecessary face reveal, and most of the western RPGs are just wall-to-wall whiteness. Even if you can design your character to be black as midnight, usually the voice is so obviously white.

I guess only light skinned humans survive into 2100s...eesh.

There is also that core of people that love to call street black language "racist," even though quite a bit of people sound like that. It's one thing to have the only black character in a story sound like that and drop random n-bombs; it's another to have a character who speaks the language in his or her own way because of their background. Or whatever. The Mass Effect Trilogy was disappointing in this regard: all 3 games, my superficially black character sounded like Captain Janeway from Star Trek Voyager, not the Kenyan princess I had imagined. This is my complaint as a black gamer, but I imagine other minorities feel a bit peeved playing the same racial stock over and over.

My last gripe is that game development focus is all screwed up. While Microsoft and Sony are too busy converging on PCs, Nintendo is the last company trying to innovate. New IP is rare, and the last two generations are mostly franchise favorites. The difference is that Nintendo always tries to make gameplay center around the latest gimmick in their systems. For example, while PS4 games are touting 60fps and Xbox one holds the crown for awesome marketplaces, Metroid and Zelda have you using the Wii wand to aim your arm cannon and swing your sword. The Wii U versions use the Wii U pad's screen for inventory and map management, while all the action happens on your main tv. Nintendo's gameplay additions fundamentally change the experience, whereas the Sony and Microsoft counterparts simply look prettier.

smarm alert!

The Xbox One Kinect is so well-integrated; voice commands work well, motion capture is great, but so many titles don't utilize these features because Microsoft was too worried about chasing dollars to try and become its own console. Sony's Move sucks, and they should have given up on motion-capture this generation and focused on controller-in-hand games.

The biggest shame is that console gaming development is shifting in Japan to mobile games, and all that aforementioned innovation is on its way down the toilet. I cry about this into my pillow at night.

Tips in frugality: How I sent home 50% of my Japanese paycheck

At first, I, too was a retail slave.

I'm cheap and I love it. I want to clue you in on how I went from $10k in debt to almost double that in savings in two years. This here isn't new to anyone, just proof that most of you can make it work.

Why me? It all started with getting a job and jumping income levels. My close friend Zack, who is also my work neighbor, bikes to work everyday and I asked him why. This opened up a conversation about saving, investing, and MrMoneyMustache. Before I got used to a more expensive lifestyle, I sent home the difference in pay. After paying them off I had a new focus: the American stock market.

2 years later I'm on top of the building of one of the 
richest men in history. ON TOP!

Why you? Some things in Yokohama are cheaper than Seattle, and vice versa. Fresh ingredients and food are cheaper; alcohol is, too. Transportation is more expensive, but your company usually reimburses you 100%, which explains why biking is so profitable. Some of the changes are universal, other apply to only me or living in Yokohama.

How? Food. For a long while, I cooked for myself at least 4 days a week. I suck at cooking, and never really improved. Costco sells a 2-lb 4-pack of individually wrapped chicken breasts for $10. That's your main meat for 5 big or 8 medium-sized meals. A pot of curry is about $5-6, and you can eat it all week! I also dropped $20 every 2 months coffee beans and have avoided going to cafes (drip is $3.50 in Japan, yeesh!).

Timmmmm Currrrrrrrrrray!

Drinking. Luckily, Zack bought his tickets for the frugal train a few years before me, and is in the same mentality. We drink $1 beers outside of convenience stores before joining a party where they're $5. Another shortcut was when we did the low carb diets, buying a giant bottle of fizz and a 5th of whiskey. You get 12 x 50 cent drinks. More than enough to get loose off of $3 and 20g carbs!

The downside is the social invitations, though. My co-workers are older and generally want to go to nicer places. I work a different schedule, so I've taken all 3 opportunities this year to go to the $60 per person Italian dinner. However, Japanese people love to go out, and if you work the same hours as someone, you might go out a few times a week.

Transportation. Driving is expensive, and public transportation is treated like that crazy uncle that people invite because it would be cruel to tell him he sucks. If you live in the right area, though, you can either a) bike and cancel that gym membership or b) take the bus/train and use that commute to read or text all your stupid Buzzfeed Top 10 articles to your friends.

Most people don't think about it, but gas ain't the only cost to driving. Parking, insurance, and maintenance are fees you can equate to up to 20% of your income. My bike ride to work was 40 minutes and was a little under 6 miles away. You may or may not be as fortunate, but you might consider transportation costs in your next move. It might be worth another $200/month that you'd spend anyway getting to work!

Entertainment: watching. Porn is free, so let's cross that off. What people might not know is Kissanime.com and Kisscartoon.me, two sister sites that stream a boatload of high-quality content both with Japanese subtitles, and dubbed. There is minimal advertising, and the content works without an account. I just watched my childhood favorite, DarkWing Duck last night!

Movies and tv shows are a little different. There are tons of free sketchy sites, but I prefer the obvious Netflix, which doesn't work in Japan without a bit of sorcery. If you can't wait until June 2015, then you can get Strong VPN service to fool Netflix.com into thinking you're in the US. I've been a Prime Instant Video member for 3 years now, and their streaming tv and movie service has finally started taking itself seriously. You also need the aforementioned VPN service, but the selection is pretty good!

Entertainment: playing. I have paid full price for 3 new games in the last 2 years. Otherwise, I buy used. I used to buy new and preserve the case and then I started traveling a lot. That gets expensive, the shit gets shoved in a box and there's water damage and xyz, it's just not worth it to me.

Also, the disturbing trend of (American) companies releasing unfinished games means that paying full price is riskier than waiting until someone sells it on Craigslist (a week later sometimes!) Sometimes you get lucky and Dell decides to sell the game with a big ass coupon. I just got $25 back on the $40 Zelda: Majora's Mask remake.

Shoutout to PlayStation Plus for having monthly free games. I am sitting on 80 games, downloaded free after having the service for 4 years.

Utilities. I live in a tiny apartment in an old building, and that may be the hardest thing to control. I am still appalled that Ballardians pay $1400 for 2-bedroom apartments, but it's a nice place to live! One of the things I DO have control over is using a prepaid cell phone. I have a tablet and use wifi when I can (Starbucks and 7-11 in Japan), and otherwise have to top up my prepaid phone $30 every 60 days. Most of you probably spend $50 or so per month for the convenience. There are alternatives!

When I live in the States again, I'm looking to try Freedom Wireless, which looks to be either free or $20/month for a slightly limited smart phone. That kind of change is worth it for me.

Shopping: Amazon. I am an unabashed fan of Amazon, and it works just as well in Japan. I stay away from department stores, which in Japan are mostly women's clothing/cosmetics shops anyway. "Sale" means they're lying to you.


TL,DR; Cooking for myself, biking, drinking at convenience stores, using prepaid phone service, Amazon and buying used is what allows me to sock away dat sweet 50!

Why, Google?

Web browser. Search Engine. Operating system. Solar panel investor. Self-driving automobiles. Blogger, pictures, Youtube. Google is the shit. Google has been my go-to for so many things for most of my life on this planet. However, 2014 was a rough patch for me and the company products.

ugh...shut up!

In 2013, Google had Asus release the Nexus 7, a sleek and sexy, well-built tablet that ran the most hardcore, least-altered version of its Android operating system. Not to mention it cost 1/3rd the cost of an iPad!! Back then, I wanted one so bad I almost killed a man. Then I got one, and sold my HP THRiVE, which was a shame because THAT device had both an SD slot AND a regular-sized HDMI slot. I was happy with my purchase for a solid 2 years. Awesome device for the gallery, which interacts with your Google Photos and Picasa and makes the device awesome for showing off your galleries, synchs notes with the Notepad application, Gmail works flawlessly, and the case I got was a cover, stand, and also power-saver. Long battery life, snappy applications. And then, in November 2014, Android rolled out with the Lollipop upgrade, and everything went to shit.

...but it WORKS!

This update, in my experience, is worse than the notorious Windows 8.1 migration, and probably the worst operating system update ever released. Lollipop is so bad that I've deleted all data and reset to factory settings 3 times now in the 2 months this shit upgrade has been released. Lollipop has tons of known issues, such as battery life (no problem for me) and wi-fi issues (random drops) to just overall sucking really badly. My biggest issue is that when an app doesn't know what to do, it just crashes and resets my tablet. I was lost in Yokohama, trying to make it to a meeting, and connecting to a free wifi connection and BAM! Google Maps had had enough. Sitting on the train, using the Notes application, writing a checklist of what I'd do with my mother when she came to visit? BAM! Forget that shit, we're gonna reset on you! I've kept the tablet in pristine condition, and deleted apps I don't use, in addition to doing 3 factory resets, yet this device still crashes. This is worse than the most unstable PC I've ever used. Convenience is completely ruined when you have to wait for your dysfunctional device to reset every other use. My 5 year old Windows 8.1 laptop has been in a sleep/wake cycle for almost 2 months now, with no hard resets or shutdowns, and it's fine.

it was SUCH a sexy device...what the hell did you do to it?

The Nexus 7's Lollipop (Androi 5.0) performance is so bad that I'm selling my Google stock and buying an iPad. I'm done with this. Don't release the 'upgrade' unless you're finished, Google. I will still enjoy using you search engine, blogging service, and Youtube of course, but my Android days are over. I will save the extra 300% to buy an Apple device because my iPod has outperformed my tablet, despite being 2 years older.

Update: They released the latest, much-needed Lollipop update, which reminds me of something: updates. I have about 30 apps, after constant grooming to remove unused ones like games. I also turn the tablet to airplane mode to save battery power. At the end of the day when I turn back on my device, I'm greeted by usually 2-3 updates. Per day. I've been lost in Tokyo, finally managed to find a wifi connection only to to wait 2 minutes for the updates to download before anything becomes usable.

This sounds like first world problem griping, but I just wasn't having these issues before that damned Lollipop. I'll get back after some time about how the January 2015 Lollipop update treats me. Is anyone else disappointed?

February update: Apps still update and bog down the system before anything useful. This operating system still sucks. iPad works great!

The Age of Entertainment

The future is here! Okay, I want to state something that may or may not be obvious: in 2014, we are at the apex of entertainment. You can Google search for a video on just about anything. Want only short videos? Check. Also, 'google' is a verb in the English language now, as well as all the other text/chat terms in the world's languages. Videos longer than 20 minutes? Check. It's also the world's best signpost to free porn, which is at an all-time high, by loads.

Why the hell would you hop a bus or drive out and buy music, movies or games on a disc anymore!? Sure, you miss out on that excitement of unwrapping it and the good whiff of that new electronics smell. But instead of all that, you can download that shit in about 2 minutes, with money that doesn't even exist! Our devices are getting less and less unique-looking with Apple's success at creating an ever-shrinking rectangle, and game consoles being mistaken for printers in their boxiness. It's really easy to see why some of the future flicks of the past and present show bright rooms with almost no furniture and square panels everywhere.

Y' know wh'um talkin'bout *nudge nudge*

For the last 10 years, everyone has been able to be an instant hit with a million-person audience via Youtube or Vimeo or some other free service with the standard. White girl with a dirty mouth? People laugh at that! Korean teenager who dances typical girl dances?  Even the dumbest ideas make money (I'm looking at you, "What does the fox say?")

*You'll also notice that I make you click on the links for pictures. Personally, my web browser usually has a minimum of 10 pages open at the same time. One page at a time is for the birds! If you don't already do this, try holding CTRL befo' you clik da link.

Games are pressed onto 50GB discs now, which is roughly 71x as large as a CD, which was only 2 generations, or 15 years ago. The newest generation of games have run out of significant graphic and sound processing leaps and have shifted on the finer details of realistic textures, like reducing the shine on human skin, and rendering individual strands of hair. Voice acting still remains a question, but since almost every game has been vocalized since the last generation, the tech doesn't really factor in.

Though luckily, Lara Croft is still fine as fuck.

My favorite thing about all of this is that the dearth of available entertainment means that it means it is harder to stand out. This explains nonsense garbage like LMFAO and What does the Fox say? But there are also really serious investments into quality. The sophisticated audience is stronger through the internet community.

There were always those days in class where your teacher brought in some hokey lo-fi documentary that would cut just before the lion got that goddamn gazelle. Or the one where they make up a cute story about the mother cat and her naughty kittens, and there are sound effects when the kitties fall. I rolled my eyes when I was 6, and I think the extra few members of the audience you snag with such pandering isn't worth the change in tone.

So among all the trash that FOX shows and Discovery Channel shits out, like "Bad Teachers" - a series dedicated to cutting down the most important profession for humanity, you get something like Planet Earth or Cosmos. Cosmos is a remake of an 80s Carl Sagan series of the same name. Science gets updated, and with better cameras and special effects, the explanations can evolve, too. The new host gives a very personal homage to Sagan, and quits the name dropping after that first segment in a very classy way.

I'm not gonna lie, it's a cherry on top that the host, Neil DeGrasse Tyson is black. He grew up with the advantages of middle class, as my children will, and now they'll know an incredibly successful black nerd. I would like the series anyway, as it does shit like cleverly overlapping the facts we vaguely remember from school with another topic like Social Studies. One episode was about the age of the earth, and during one scientist's research, he uncovered the poisoning effects of lead. He then went against the big gas corporations and...well, that's why our gas is 'unleaded.' I had always wondered why it needed to be specified.

http://www.cosmosontv.com - you'll like what you see!

There are still a couple hokey things about the show, but the biographies are interesting and most of the graphics augment rather than simply sensationalize.

Either way, it's nice to be in a position to enjoy all this crazy entertainment.