If Life Is a Game, Sometimes I Stop Playing

I lost my keys today.  For some of you, this is a frequent occurrence and no longer particularly traumatic.  In fact, lets face it, you could divide humanity fairly neatly into two groups: those of you who lose your keys, and those of you who don't.  I've never lost my keys.  I was a proud member of the "I know where my keys are right now" clan.  I looked down my nose at the thought of those stupid key ring locators and their 1995-esque websites.  But this morning as I tossed my bed, my desk, and even searched the fridge, I was cursing the fact that I can't locate my keys from space with a satellite.  I eventually gave up and drove to work with a spare car key--spending much of the day muttering incoherently to myself about how stupid it was for me to not be able to find my keys in a 120 square foot bedroom.  

In the most tragically comic manner I located my keys pretty much the moment I arrived home from work.  They were on the kitchen counter, lodged between a box of Rice-a-Roni and a box of Uncle Ben's rice--apparently my roommates are equal-opportunity instant rice eaters, neither box being mine--and it looked pretty much like this:

 

Impossible to see the keys from anywhere but directly above, which I happened to do by accident before I even started what I expected to be a stressful second search for them.  As to WHY the keys were there, I can only assume I set them down there in order to wedge my Guinness into the fridge.  Long story short, if I have, in fact, moved over to that side of humanity that regularly loses its keys, I'm getting a key ring locator.  Life without your keys is too stressful, even with Guinness in the fridge.  

    In other news, I'm currently reading and compiling my thoughts on the FCC's National Broadband Plan, which they released on Tuesday.  It is long on detail and, like any good government document, self-referential, so look for my thoughts on that sometime this weekend once it has been digested.    If you are interested in the infrastructure of the internet, mobile internet, television, and cellular communications, you may want to read it, as it does not assume too much prior knowledge from the reader.  

And speaking of reading, I've just finished listening to Gary Vaynerchuk's Crush It.  This book borderlines on the obnoxious self-help genre and Gary's propellant reading style didn't rub me the right way, but I still must recommend it to anyone with a hobby they love that they ought to be turning into a business.  The man certainly knows what he's talking about and he practices what he preaches, so taking him seriously isn't too difficult despite his own enthusiasm.  He reads the whole book in under four hours so if you have a short plane hop or a long car ride and want to consume something interesting without starting a novel you won't be able to put down for days, pick it up.  

In the meantime, please watch one of what I am sure will be many TED talks I will want to share with you.  In this case it is Jane McGonigal discussing online gaming and how it might fit into the grander scheme of human socialization.  While some of her ideas here are big and speculative at best, her description of gamers and why we play games is incredibly astute, in my opinion.  Take twenty minutes and watch: