I’m going to look into this documentary to see if there is a way that I can watch it. I think it looks interesting!

With a history as an engaged RPG gamer you might have predicted that I was really excited when I heard that during last week’s Cyber Monday sale, Square-Enix was offering Final Fantasy 7 for a ridiculously low price. In fact, Square put pretty much their entire collection on sale at prices that were 60% off. It was crazy!

But you might imagine my surprise when I tried to purchase a few downloadable versions of some classic Final Fantasy games only to be met with an error screen on the Square website. I tried to purchase those downloads for about an hour and a half and just couldn’t get past the error screen.

It was the most frustrating experience you could imagine.

Or at least it was the most frustrating experience you could imagine until I contacted Square’s help line to see if they could help me with problem I encountered. And lucky for you folks, I’ve saved the entire back and forth conversation for you to read and most likely be disgusted by as I was disgusted. Here’s how the e-mail conversation started:

I tried to purchase both Final Fantasy 7 and Final Fantasy 8 PC editions during your Cyber Monday sale, but the order form on the website kept coming up with an error message. Is it possible to still buy those two games and the Cyber Monday prices? I’m a long-time Square fan and I hope that you understand my frustration when I could have gotten these two games at a great price, but your website wouldn’t work for me. Thanks.

I think I was pretty rational and calm in that query. Here is Square’s first awful response:

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix online store. We apologize for the inconvenience. We show that the Cyber sale already ended. Please attempt a new order. To place a new order, go to: http://store.na.square-enix.com/store/sqenixus/en_US/ResetShoppingCart

Ugh… talk about a useless, non-response. If I owned Square-Enix and I saw that this was the response that one of my customer service people sent back to the question that I posed, I’d fire them for not being able to comprehend basic English or customer intent. Here is my response to Square:

It appears that you didn’t listen to my concern. The items that I wanted to buy were on sale during your Cyber Monday sale. Your website did not work during your Cyber Monday sale. I tried to purchase the items several times during your Cyber Monday sale and your website would not work. This is false advertising and is against the law in America.

I’m asking that you recognize that your website – not me or anything on my end – but your website failed during the period that your sale was active. And as an act of repentance for your website failing during your sale, I’ve asked that you offer me the two games that I was attempting to purchase for the price that they were offered during the failure of your website.

The response you provided doesn’t address any of those points. Please try again.

I mean – I can’t be any clearer in that response, can I? Well, get ready for more useless help from Square. This was their response:

Thank you for contacting the Square Enix online store. We apologize for the inconvenience this issue may have caused you.

Unfortunately, we are no longer able to place an order for the price on the Cyber Monday promotion. You may need to complete the order at the current price that is showing online. However, we can submit a request to match the promotional price once the order has been completed. Please be reminded that this request is not a guarantee the the price will be matched.

If you wanted to place an order, you may do so. Once it is completed, please provide the promotional offer information that details the price you are referring to.

That’s right, folks – Square’s response to my request was to tell me to buy the products at full price and then request that I be offered the promotional price… after I made the purchases! In what world does that make sense? Well, I attempted to explain this to the dopes at Square:

This isn’t an acceptable resolution to the problem. You certainly wouldn’t accept my “conditional” payment and forward me the software with the condition being that I’m only sending you the money if I get the discount that your broken website wouldn’t allow me to get on Cyber Monday. You’d be fools to give away your product on the hope that I was going to pay in full just like I’d be a fool to pay you in full with the hope that you’d live up to meeting the sale price (which, let’s be honest, you absolutely wouldn’t do).

So this has been a useless interaction for me. I look forward to sharing it with my fellow gamers and folks who have generally been disenfranchised by a once-great company.

They haven’t/didn’t respond to my last e-mail, but that’s okay. The steep decline in the popularity of their now-craptastic Final Fantasy series speaks volumes to how far this company has fallen. People used to line up outside of stores to get the latest Final Fantasy games. Now? Well, fan backlash was so strong against Final Fantasy 14 that it forced Square to take the game off of the market and totally recreate the product. When your company has fallen that far, it’s no wonder that your customer “service” team isn’t able to meet the type of simple request that I asked in my question.

Oh how the mighty have fallen…

Frankly, the internet in 2014 kind of sucks.

While I don’t think that we need to go back to the days of the Prodigy internet message boards or the original America Online, I do think that as we’ve moved further down the path of “Social Media Life” we’ve actually removed much of the interaction that we used to have with our online friends. Even as close as 10 years ago I could log-on to the internet and have my Yahoo Messenger load up as well as my AOL Instant Messenger and immediately engage in any number of one-on-one conversations with both my “real life” friends and my internet friends. And the conversations weren’t useless or the type of silly drivel that you read on these humor websites. No, we were making connections and having real conversations. It was fun!

Today, everything seems to need to be filtered through a Facebook or other social media-like portal and I don’t like it. I want to be able to log-on and talk to the folks who originally made the internet fun for me. I also want to be able to pick these people’s brains in a more readily available manner than sending a message into a seemingly black social media hole. There’s no connection in that method of communication.

Unfortunately, though, I don’t think that we’re ever going to get back to that level of meaningful one-on-one interaction on the internet. I think we’re stuck in a mess that doesn’t allow people to grow real friendships through shared online interactions. And given the friends that I’ve made through these online interactions, I think that’s a real shame for future generations of internet users.

The quick update for Usable Web Solutions, LLC is that I carried through on my plans to remove all of my third party clients and now the business operates as a shell corporation that owns several independent websites. While I enjoyed working with most of my clients most of the time, I began to run into issues where certain clients just wouldn’t pay for my services. In business, I live by a simple code – you pay a person/company what you promised to pay them, assuming that the good or service provided was of the expected quality. Simple. I never had a complaint about the very high standards that I set for my work; rather, the clients who stopped paying me ran into their own financial troubles and their financial troubles became my issue. Not good. As you might suspect, once those clients stopped paying regularly I cut them off and canceled those contracts.

Then I ran into several issues where clients began to think that since I was their website designer, then I was also their in-house technology person. They were wrong. Some folks just didn’t understand that the guy who makes your website isn’t the guy who is tasked with fixing your Microsoft Word when a document doesn’t open… particularly when the contract you signed with that website guy clearly states his responsibilities being tied solely to your website presence! Thankfully, I only had one or two of these clients over the years (each with several websites, come to think of it). Spinning them off to other web designers in the area was an easy decision when their contracts came due.

And then there was my favorite type of head-shaking client – the ones who knew almost nothing about technology, but they would boss me around demanding that complex activities (think highly sophisticated database building) take place in a matter of days. I had one client that demanded an integrated third party payment system be installed on their website by the end of the day. Granted, if they were using PayPal or Google Wallet that would have been an annoying, but rather easy task. But, as I’m sure you suspect by this point, they didn’t want to use the easy option. They wanted to use the most complex, obscure website payment system on the internet. What fun?! After I finished that job (it took a weekend to get it working correctly), I let that client know in advance of their contract expiring that I wasn’t going to renew it and they should find another company for their website services. Last I checked, their website still hadn’t been updated and I spun them off as a client some 3 or 4 years ago.

Sure, I had many great clients, but my aggravating ones easily won the day and forced me out of the third party website management business. It just wasn’t worth the aggravation.

Today, I keep Usable Web Solutions, LLC open and I use it to manage and build my own suite of websites. You’re reading my personal blog site – JerseySmarts.com. In the coming weeks, I plan to release some new websites and reintroduce some of my old websites that I’ve retired over the years. None of these websites will have input or management-level requirements from anyone on the outside of Usable Web Solutions, LLC (and as the guy who owns and operates that company, what I’m really saying here is that I’m going to manage the suite of websites myself). Having all of my websites managed under my own banner and operated by me and me alone should make the entire management process flow much easier.

That’s your quick update on Usable Web Solutions, LLC. It was my first small business and the first major success that I had as a business owner. Here’s hoping for many more similar successes in my future!

No one seems to give too much of a damn about Nintendo’s latest console

As a kid growing up I used to love playing video games. I wasn’t obsessive about the games like you see with so many young kids today; I probably played as much as anyone else in my age group. However, as I got older I began to learn more about the video game companies. Who were the people behind these games? Who made the Mario series? What about the Madden games? Who was behind the wildly popular WCW/nWo video games? By the way, I used to consistently watch wrestling (again, probably not any more than anyone else in my age group – we all loved Stone Cold and The Rock back in the 1990s). Those two items – video games and wrestling – were two pieces of pop culture that I “knew” and that I felt comfortable investing in. So I invested in WWE and THQ stock back in 2008, too.

A quick side note: today, I’m only invested in two stocks – Sirius XM and WWE. They’re both reliable and WWE’s dividend is fantastic, not to mention that the stock has doubled in value over the last year (and… I happened to purchase before it doubled, too). Oh, and I sold my THQ stock at a profit before the company went under.

Getting back to the point, one of the things that I knew well as a young kid and that I researched quite a bit as I got older was the video game industry and, in particular, the Nintendo company. No matter what people may think, the Nintendo gaming consoles were the superior, global home console up until the GameCube was released (and floundered). They beat the Genesis and the first PlayStation as well as a long line of one-shot consoles that could never really compete. And yet, when I began investing – even after Nintendo had its major success and reclaimed the “King of the Consoles” crown with the Wii, I couldn’t bring myself to invest in the company.

And I still can’t bring myself to invest in the company because of blunders like the Wii U.

There are a bunch of people out there who are writing about how Nintendo should scrap the entire Wii U platform and focus on a truly next generation system. Others are writing that Nintendo should just give up on hardware and become a dominant software company on the Sony and Microsoft systems (which I think is a silly, dumb idea). And there’s never a shortage of anti-Nintendo writers who are heralding the end of the company once and for all (they get proven wrong every few years).

I don’t think I fall easily into any one of those categories. First, I’m just a guy with a blog – not someone who gets paid to write about technology or gaming systems. Second, I base my entire opinion on not investing in Nintendo solely on my own personal impressions of their ability to meet the demands of the video game market. Third, I’ve always been a fan of Nintendo and as long as they exist I’ll probably remain a fan (even though my video gaming has dropped from 2 – 3 hours each day as a kid to 2 – 3 hours every 6 months today).

With that information as a base, the title of this entry remains: What to do about Nintendo’s Wii U blunder?

I’m not going to suggest that they should scrap the system completely. However, I do think that it would make a lot of sense to drop the dual screen peripheral requirement for the most intense and hardcore games. In other words, when the latest Call of Duty, Grand Theft Auto, Assassin’s Creed, Madden, NBA 2K, etc. are being developed and released for the next generation consoles (Wii U, X-Box 1, and PlayStation 4), the developers should have the option of making a game that doesn’t require the use of the second screen in the game pad. I don’t know if it is easy or economically viable for third party developers to do that right now, but it seems to me that part of the Wii U blunder is the gigantic game pad with a second screen that hasn’t ignited the video gaming world like the Wii Remote did in the last decade. And speaking of the Wii Remote, I don’t think that Nintendo ever really understood why it was such a draw for hardcore and old school gamers. It wasn’t that any of us old school video gamers or any of the hardcore gamers were excited about swinging our arms around like a looney tune – nope. The draw of the Wii Remote is that there were only two or three buttons that you could push to perform an action – not the nearly dozen or so that you had to deal with on the PlayStation controller.

Nintendo missed that point completely and it shows with the silly second screen in the huge Wii U game pad.

The other thing that I would do if I were Nintendo is I’d really focus on the next generation console and make it everything that their competition is and more. Yes, it’s time for Nintendo to start making a home theater-capable console. That means that the next Nintendo console has to be able to play the latest home movie technology whether it’s still Blu-Ray movies or something more advanced. And the console needs to be able to easily perform the same multimedia streaming/tasks that the Microsoft and Sony platforms can perform. If that type of functionality is paired with a blazing fast system that can handle the latest graphics and includes a powerful, yet easy-to-use internet shop, then I think Nintendo has a winner on its hands.

The final requirement that I would have for Nintendo’s next system is full backward functionality with the Wii and Wii U. Further, that backwards functionality should include the ability to transfer the digital ownership rights of any game purchased in the Wii and Wii U Virtual Consoles. That would be the type of ground-breaking, customer-centric focus that would set Nintendo apart (again) from the pack and ultimately lead it to long-term success…

…and potentially lead me to invest in the company!

However, the biggest tangible shift that I’ve experienced since my last update (which was almost one full month ago!) is the new laptop that I find myself typing this entry on. That’s right – after 7+ years as my go-to home computing machine, my HP Pavilion dv8000 finally kicked the bucket. Well, to be honest it didn’t actually kick the bucket – rather the primary hard drive started skipping and slowing down to an unacceptable pace. This is a problem that can be easily fixed by installing a new primary hard drive, but I took the failure of the primary drive as a sign… that it was time to get a new computer. And that’s just what I did! The picture below shows an incredibly bright picture of my new laptop computer – check it out:

There’s my new laptop and the free tablet that came with it.

The new laptop is an HP Envy 17-j029nr Quad Edition Notebook PC and, if I’m not mistaken, this is the highest grade, pre-configured laptop that you can purchase at HP.com.

It’s a pretty bad ass machine.

There are too many bells and whistles for me to explain all of them, but they include a 24GB solid state drive dedicated solely to making start up and shut down times blazing fast (we’re talking less than 10 seconds and, in most cases, less than 5 seconds). Other cool features are the Beats Audio, the fingerprint scanning and log-in system (now I log-in to websites by swiping my finger across a reader built into my laptop), a terabyte of disk space, a fourth generation i7 processor, Windows 8, and a back-lit keyboard which makes it easy to read the letters and numbers in front of me when it gets dark around my laptop. When you add up all of the great benefits that I’m receiving by using this new laptop over the old one, the relatively few annoyances that I have with the new machine melt away. For example, I really liked the layout, size, and feel of the Pavilion’s keyboard. However, after about a week or so of using this new laptop I’m getting used to the feel and touch of the new keyboard system. Also, the left part of the keyboard on the Envy seems to dip and appears extra “soft” (which isn’t the right adjective to use, but it adequately describes that side of the keyboard). However, I really haven’t experienced any negative outcome because of this “softness,” so I’m assuming that it doesn’t really matter that much.

As a guy who knows a little something about technology – and I admit that what I know continues to decrease in an increasingly technological world – I’m very impressed with this system. And I’m glad that I bit the bullet and purchased the pre-configured system instead of building my own. This configuration is the one that HP knows, trusts, and manufactures in mass quantities. They obviously chose this configuration for a reason and the expertise of their design team is fine for me! Also, as an older “tech head” I tend to suffer from analysis paralysis when it comes to buying a new system. If you haven’t heard of analysis paralysis, then you should know that it basically means I analyze and consider different purchase options until I eventually convince myself that I don’t want to be the guy purchasing the system that is either already obsolete or will be obsolete within days or weeks of my purchase. I managed to get over that perspective when buying this laptop and it was absolutely the right thing to do.

Two final points…

First, I don’t think that I’m done with the old HP Pavilion laptop just yet. The thing just needs a new primary hard drive and it’ll work fine. I can purchase a new primary hard drive and install it fairly easily. The issue will be kicking the internal backup drive into gear – if that can even be done. My purpose for doing that would be to transform the old laptop into a media hub for my television. Of course, this will all be easier to do and make much more sense once I purchase my own home and I have a living room that I’m setting up, but one thing at a time right now!

And on that note… second, it is really nice to not have the weight of student loans hanging over my head when situations like these come up. I use my laptop on a daily basis not just to browse the internet, but to manage the two small businesses that I own. I also use my laptop on a daily basis to manage my online presence for the classes that I teach and the one that I’m taking. Plus, my laptop allows me to work from home one day each week. So you can see what type of a crisis it is when I don’t have a laptop that is functioning. Before I repaid my student loans, this crisis would still be going on because I wouldn’t have been able to purchase a new laptop right away. However, with the student loans gone and no longer hanging over my head – I was able to purchase a new laptop (and a top-of-the-line one at that) without any problems.

The moral of the story is that being student loan free and facing a crisis isn’t a major problem any more.

For example, the first project I contributed some funds towards on Kickstarter.com was a country music album from a female professional wrestler (eclectic, right?). She met her funding goal and is now in the final stages of completing her new album. Due to the level I chose to support her project at, along the way I’ve been given behind-the-scenes updates on the making of the album. I was also a member of a group of backers who qualified for a private online concert where she sang some of her new songs and covered some long-time popular hits. It was pretty cool.

Lately, I’ve been trying to put some money behind small video game developers because let’s be honest – without these small developers, the entire video game industry is doomed. Specifically, I’ve been trying to put money behind some action/adventure games and role playing games. The role playing games are really what I look for whenever I browse around Kickstarter.com. After Square Enix screwed up the entire Final Fantasy series by trying to make it too realistic, I began looking for better gaming experiences and the truth is that they’re really hard to come by.

And it’s not just the video game industry that I’m thinking about. Remember, video games are one of the primary training tools for a lot of our high-end military applications and one of the best hand-eye coordination tools that we have at our disposal. Also, more creative minds building, structuring, and restructuring these software applications can also lead to new breakthroughs in the medical field or in scientific research (like the Folding@Home project). There are a ton of great reasons to support these small, independent developers.

Oh – and I support these developers because video games are fun!

I thought I’d take a moment to share some of the latest projects that I’m helping to fund. I encourage you to check out some of these projects and, if you’re so inclined, why not throw them a few bucks to help them along their way? You can pay directly through PayPal (via Amazon) and you’ll get a great deal on a new video game (it usually just costs between $10 and $15 to qualify for a digital copy of a game). Check it out!

Are you active on Kickstarter.com? If so, are there any projects that you think I should know about? Feel free to leave a link in the comments section below. Thanks!

But Kickstarter is better than just feeling good about what you do with your money – you actually get something in return for your dollars.

The first campaign that I put some money towards was a music project. Believe it or not, there is a woman professional wrestler who is an accomplished country music artist. She’s not half bad, actually! Anyway, this woman was trying to make a second album with funding from Kickstarter and was asking for anyone to contribute $5, $10, $50, $100, and so on towards the costs to develop her album. After the word spread around the internet, she reached her funding goal and is now in the process of making the music. The dollar amount that you contribute to a campaign dictates what you’ll get in return. Personally, I only contribute at a level where I’m going to get something tangible. For this woman’s campaign, I contributed $50 (funded from my website company) which gets me both a physical copy of the new album plus the full MP3 version of the album, my name in the “thank you” section of the album, my CD autographed by the woman, and an invitation-only web concert. Sometimes the rewards are much more extravagant. For example, in this campaign if you donated $10,000, then you received all of these items, a 30-minute in-home concert, a hand-painted t-shirt from the singer, an executive producer listing for the album, and a personalized thank you video.

And each Kickstarter campaign is different. Seriously, check out the link above – I think you’ll enjoy what you find on there.

This entry, though, is about a new video game console that I saw on Kickstarter. Here, watch the video for yourself:

Did you watch the video? It’s a pretty cool concept, right? Some of you might be wondering, “Well, what’s the difference between this OUYA video game system and the Nintendo Wii or the Playstation 3 or something like that?” And that’s a good question. I’ve been doing some research on this OUYA concept and what these folks are trying to do and this is what I think the difference is between this console and the others.

It’s open.

When I say it’s open I mean that you can go in and hack it and it doesn’t void a warranty or become an illegal device or anything like you might imagine. In other words, people can go in and hack the core system’s operating protocols (I’m probably not using the right language) and it’s not a problem at all (assuming, of course, that the hacking doesn’t fry the system). The OUYA system is built on the same software infrastructure as the Droid cell phones out there – it’s an Android-based system. What this means is that anyone who can develop an “app” for a Droid cell phone or an app for a Droid tablet (for example, a NOOK) can have that app operationable on the OUYA system. This creates two immediate outcomes – one interesting and one alarming.

The interesting outcome is that since the console is built on the Android system, there are going to be thousands of apps and mobile games available for download on the first day that this thing is hooked up in your living room. The second, more alarming outcome is that I can’t imagine wanting to play any of the time-wasting games on my cell phone on the big screen of my television.

That second outcome is one of the issues that the OUYA development team is taking very seriously. They are talking to a variety of high-level gaming software companies to ensure that there are blockbuster-level games available for this system as soon as it hits the market. That’s going to be a huge task, but with only one week of starting their Kickstarter campaign these folks have already generated over $5.2 million from over 40,000 backers.

That’s a lot of money to make in a single week!

I admit that I’m not technical enough to know much more about how this thing is going to work, but I do know that if you Bing “OUYA” you’ll find a bunch of positive and negative press for the not-yet-created console. For my part, I like supporting these Kickstarter campaigns and I’ve supported a variety of independent video games on that website already. So I supported the OUYA campaign at the $99 level. This gets me the ability to reserve my username before the console goes live to market, a “Founder” emblem emblazoned next to my username forever, and an OUYA console plus one controller. That’s right – a brand new video game system (expected to be delivered some time in March 2013) for $99 (plus $20 for shipping).

You can’t even buy a used current generation console for $99!

If you’re interested in the OUYA or in at least learning more about it, check out their Kickstarter page. This is a very interesting concept and I’m glad to support it!

Which brings me to one of the two social media platforms where I do maintain accounts: Facebook.

Facebook seems to have become "Happy Birthday-book"

I’m sure that most of the folks reading this entry have a Facebook account – it seems like most people on the planet have a Facebook account these days. And, if you’re like me, then you’ve noticed something weird about Facebook in the last few years. No, it’s not the fact that Facebook seems to constantly change their layout without the consent (or considered happiness) of their users. And no, it’s not the fact that spam-loving companies have found a way to breach even Facebook’s strong security measures. Instead, if you’re like me you’ve noticed that Facebook has been reduced to a single phrase for most people…

“Happy Birthday, buddy!”

I can’t tell you how many of my Facebook friends only interact with me on my birthday. And, admittedly, there are scores of my Facebook friends who I only interact with on their birthdays. Over the last year, I’ve made a conscious effort to not send happy birthday greetings to people who I wouldn’t go out of my way to call or text with the same message. Sometimes, I find that there are social strictures that require me to send someone a happy birthday note. Other times, there are folks who I would go out of my way to say happy birthday to if I saw them during the day, but I refrain from doing so online because it seems somewhat weird.

But more than any other observation about the oodles of birthday messages that are flung around Facebook, the most pressing observation is just how weird the whole exercise is for everyone. I mean let’s be honest – how many different ways can you say, “Happy Birthday, [INSERT NAME HERE]! Enjoy!” or something similar each year to the same person before it gets redundant, repetitive, and just bizarre? With some of my Facebook friends I’ll go in and check what I wrote on their wall the prior year and most of the time the message that I’m crafting for the new happy birthday message is eerily similar.

The whole thing is just bizarre to me. However, the weirdness factor aside I have no plans to get rid of my Facebook page. The truth is that Facebook is too ingrained in our society today and we are all too reliant on that particular social media platform. So, while I may be a little exasperated with the happy birthday messages that I see on there every single day, I think it’s just part of the platform that we’re going to have to accept.

By the way, my birthday is next Tuesday, January 31st… and I’ve grown to expect many birthday greetings on my Facebook wall!

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