John,

Few people knew what I felt on on Friday July 18th, 2008. That day was one of great sadness and great excitement. Excitement, because I knew that upcoming Monday I would begin working for one of the World’s BEST Institutions of Higher Education, Princeton University. Great sadness, because I was leaving a place that was truly a second home for me. It was a place that taught me to be an adult, a professional, & a scholar. I made many friends during my years there and learned many valuable lessons. But the most important lesson Rider University ever taught me is that no matter how much we love a particular place, you have to move on when you’re not realizing your full potential.

The path you walked at Rider was not very different from my own. We’ve talked at great length over the years about how much Rider University means to us and how grateful we are for the time we have spent there. As you leave Moore Library tomorrow for the last time; think not about how much you will miss Rider, but about all the valuable lessons you learned from it, that you will carry with you to Princeton. You will learn, as I did, that those Rider lessons give you valuable insight and perspective even at a place such as Princeton.

Enjoy your final hours at Rider tomorrow and know that in spirit I am with you.

I look forward to seeing you reunited with your transplanted Rider Brothers & Sister at Princeton University on Monday.

Thank you for your knowledge and your friendship.

Until Monday,

Sean

Today, Greg and I were chatting on Google Talk and he asked me if I ever heard of Archive.org. Of course I had! He just discovered it. During our conversation I went and plugged in the old URL: www.theward.net Greg had already beaten me to this idea as he had told me he spent a considerable amount of time with it yesterday. As I began clicking through I realized that they had captured a sizable chunk of what TheWard was all about, especially during its most important years. Like catching up with an old friend, I was reminded of things I had completely forgotten about. It was a wonderful experience for me.

A lot of my early success as a blogger was because of being a part of TheWard Universe. It exposed me to a lot of other Bloggers in the country and even put me in touch with some of them. Two that come to mind are Trevor & Alecia from Arizona. I haven’t spoken to them in years but we’re actually friends on Facebook. Ryan and I haven’t spoken much either which is weird because his wife is from Lawrenceville and I live there still. But because of TheWard I was getting 1,000 unique visitors each month to my site. I don’t think I’ve ever been able to achieve that level of legitimate traffic ever since & that is fine.

So that leaves on person, Greg Coleman. We’ve remained close friends before TheWard and after. We discovered medieval knights together, celebrated two of the craziest birthday celebrations of all time (His 20th & 21st), lived together for a year, we were neighbors for 2, and we still call Lawrenceville our home. Greg has always been and always will be a friend who I value a great deal. But when Greg decided to no longer write for TheWard my heart was broken. I knew that TheWard would not be the same without his writings or graphics & I was right. Ryan kept TheWard going but it descended into a blog about coding and open standards. Which was what Ryan’s world was all about at that time. Greg never wrote for another blog ever again. For years I tried to get him to go back to it but it never took. I think Greg’s thought process on that has been that there is no Misfits without Glenn Danzig. Its just not the same without the original team. I can respect that.

So I ask you to go here: http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://theward.net

Visit this archival collection of a blog you probably never knew existed, it will probably be a fun trip.

Also for an even more hilarious bit, read this interview with yours truly from January of 2003. It really captures what I was all about in January of 2003. Enjoy: http://web.archive.org/web/20030330234129/www.theward.net/blog/archives/000204.html

So to Ryan & Greg I say this final piece, you were both good Bloggers. You were an amazing team. Like all good things, TheWard came to an end. But you do realize that if you had stuck it out, you probably would have had a book deal or a TV Show or something right? Hell TheWard could have been CollegeHumor.com for all we know…

Morons

Today I announced I was leaving Comcast’s Cable TV service behind for good. Turbo and I decided we have had enough of Comcast’s horrible service and we got our lease renewed for another year so we figured now’s the time to switch. I posted the fact that I was leaving on Twitter today and then the following occurred:

seannyfunco: Good Bye Comcast and on Tuesday Hello DirecTV.

ComcastSteve: @seannyfunco don’t go

seannyfunco: @ComcastSteve I’ll be keeping you for Internet but I’ve had enough of your terrible signal quality when it comes to TV.

ComcastSherri: @seannyfunco @comcaststeve sorry to hear that. Are you sure you don’t want us to try to help?

seannyfunco: @ComcastSherri I’ve had about 4 24hr+ outages over the last year in my neighborhood for both Cable and Internet at the same time.
I was w/ Cablevision for 3 years in another town & had ZERO outages not to mention I never had OnDemand or Digital Ch. issues

ComcastSherri: @seannyfunco ouch..

seannyfunco: @ComcastSherri Its your infrastructure’s unreliability that made me switch. I also loath your Internet usage cap too. But you got me there.

ComcastSherri: @seannyfunco Bummer

So I think that for the most part concludes my Twitter experience with Comcast. I will say this, the fact that Comcast is actively seeking out customer issues on Twitter is pretty awesome. The fact that they’re addressing customer concerns via Twitter is incredible. I really give Comcast a lot of credit for what they’re doing there but unfortunately it’s not enough to make me stay a Comcast TV customer. The issues that are making me leave are far bigger then anything a person in Customer Service can handle. Their infrastructure problems and their Internet usage policies are really the breaking points for me. If I was able to go to another provider who could give me Cable modem or faster speed for Internet, I’d switch in a second. But given the nature of that industry and my location in NJ, Comcast is my only option. So you will have my business there Comcast but only until I have another option.

On that note I’d still like to thank ComcastSteve and ComcastSherri for attempting to stop my departure. I wish you guys the best and keep doing what you’re doing. I hope more companies follow your lead when it comes to Twitter & customer relations.

So I’ve been secretly reading Meghan McCain’s blog for like the past few weeks and I think its time for me to let Meghan know a few things that have been floating around in my mind since I started. I always knew Meghan was blogged during her father’s campaign but I wasn’t interested really in reading what she had to say at the time. You see, like many other Republicans, I just didn’t feel her Dad was the way to go Presidentially. In my old age I see that my ideals float more and more towards a radical libertarian slant. In my mind, the Republican party has historically always stood for many of my most important of libertarian principals, but that hasn’t been the case the past 8 years. Anyway, I digress, so I missed out on Meghan’s blogging prowess during the campaign because I was disinterested in hearing from what I deemed the “McCain political machine”. Then on Feb. 19th everything changed for me…

Meghan McCain authored a post entitled “Why Republicans Don’t Get the Internet” and never before had a title peaked my interest more. Here I am a two time student of Information Technology, a professor of Information Technology, a blogger, and a disenfranchised Republican and Meghan McCain is going to tell me why the GOP doesn’t get the Internet. I couldn’t refuse this opportunity to learn from the inside why it is that the Republican Party as a whole are as computer literate as my Mother. You can read the article for yourself but this article really struck a chord with me. Here was a girl around my age, who might not be as “technical” as me, but sure as hell gets why the Internet is important to a political campaign when it comes to recruiting younger voters. I stood up and took notice. What became obvious to me more then anything while reading this post was that the GOP had an ace up their sleeve with Meghan McCain and they blew it. Instead of listening to her ideas and her perspective on the youth of today they reluctantly gave her a blog to shut her up and didn’t do anything with her suggestions or insight. Did McCain lose the election because of this? Not by a long shot, but there was something to be gained in all of this; relevance to a younger generation. Relevance is something that the GOP is now struggling to regain and it didn’t have to be that way.

Today Meghan posted about why she thinks people like Ann Coulter are bad for the GOP. I know I’ve made statements in the past defending some of Ann’s crazy ramblings but Meghan is onto something here. There are many people in America who do not subscribe lock, stock, and barrel to the GOP agenda/platform and those people who do not believe ALL are shunned by the inner circles of the GOP. I am one of those people and apparently Meghan is also amongst our ranks too. Then someone like Rush Limbaugh or Ann Coulter comes along and spews a bunch of nonsense about whatever and its a turn off. I know I’m tired of it and Meghan is too. She feels that people aren’t supporting the GOP because of people like Ann and Rush and she’s probably right, they are huge turns offs. Why would you want to be associated with the lunacy that is Ann or Rush?

So now I come to my letter:

Dear Meghan McCain,
You’re good at what you do. As you post more and more you will get even better. I’ve been at this whole blogging thing for almost 8 years and I can honestly say I’ve never read an “opinion blog” that has fired me up as much as yours. I think you need to keep exposing the Republican party for what it has become and as long as you remain as independent from them as you are now, I honestly believe you’ll do more good for them then they’d ever admit. I know there is a lot of venom spewed at you in your comments; just ignore it. I’m sure you already do but I just wanted to say it anyway. It’s rare these days that anything gets me to write a nice long lengthy post and you my dear have inspired me to spread the word. I wish you nothing but the best and I look forward to your future posts. Maybe one day we can discuss our philosophies on how the Internet fits into the grand scheme of things and not just the GOP?

Sincerely,
SeanPiotrowski.net

As many of you know I used to work for Funcoland back in high school and college. Funcoland was bought out by Babbages Inc. prior to my departure. The Babbages Inc./Funcoland hybrid became GameStop which then bought EB. GameStop Inc. is now the “Wal-Mart” of the Game Retailers. Sure there are other smaller outfits like GameCrazy, Play-N-Trade, and others but they’re so few and far between that they don’t stand as true viable options for most gamers. Sure you can get your games at BestBuy or Wal-Mart but I want to talk about the Game retailers specifically. You see what bothers me is the current GameStop store model. You walk in a GameStop these days and it looks like a God Damned flea market half the time with products strew about, not organized in any fashion, and a mess on all the shelves. God forbid you actually are able to search their shelves alphabetically for anything! After you find what you’re looking for and you go to the counter and pay you are then BOMBARDED by your sales clerk’s up-sale pitches. They’ll most likely push some reservation on you or a subscription to Game Informer. I actually overheard a new GameStop policy has just gone into effect that states that when an employee starts their shift they have to plan out their up-sale goals for the day with their shift supervisor. When I heard that, it made me sick…

Lets travel back in time to when Funcoland Inc. was still just that, its own company. Its no secret that Funcoland rewarded its employees with a bi-weekly commission check for selling cleaning kits, Game Informer subscriptions, or other designated items. The cleaning kits gave customers an extended year warranty for their systems they bought from us and cleaned their games and systems, the Game Informer subscription gave them 10% off used games and a pretty decent magazine, and the other items well I guess depending on the item they were either getting a good deal or getting tricked into a piece of shit. One thing about all of the Funcoland up-sales was that there were no hard up-sale mandates for employees. The only person you were hurting by not selling them was yourself because you didn’t get any commission and management was always fine with that and from the customer side of things they were really getting something postivie out of each of the up-sales. Once GameStop took Funcoland over the commission system went the way of the Do-Do. Reservations and up-sales were then pushed heavily by management with no sales person incentive. My understanding is that still is the case.

So who benefits from the current up-sale/reservation philosophy at GameStop’s stores? Not the customer. Not the gamer. Its the shareholder. That’s fine. I’m a very pro-business person and believe in laissez-faire but don’t bill yourself as the store for “gamers”. If I want my games shilled by corporate mandates I’ll take my business to BestBuy, thank you very much, as they always seem to have tons of copies of titles in stock and their prices are always fair. I guess what I’m trying to say is that the days of the specialty game retailer, for gamers by gamers, is dead. I guess I just haven’t really noticed.

David Pomije, I want to say that you were the first and last person to develop a retail chain that was truly for Gamers. You invented Used Game sales for Christ sake. I enjoyed working for your company when it was still YOUR COMPANY. I don’t fault you for selling as how could you say no? Maybe its time you got back into the game.

Luckily I found an EB by me that isn’t as bad as the others and the staff there is good. But if that changes I’m going to wash my hands of you GameStop once and for all!

So now that we all know BLOGS ARE DEAD and that bullshit like Twitter are the Future. I have this internal debate on what SeanPiotrowski.net will be in the future. I honestly don’t see any of these new platforms working for me. Outside of a weekly video podcast or videolog, the written form is the easiest and most convenient for me. So don’t worry things will stay the same. With that debate I decided its time for another new look. I think we’re now on our 3rd look since the move to WordPress. Anyway this new layout is the most amazing thing I’ve ever seen. I only hope future WordPress themes get to be this feature filled. If only I had the knowledge to code my own SUPER THEME! I also find it to be a fitting theme for me being that I love Windows Vista and not many people do. Vista needs all the fans it can get! It deserves them! After all I’m not a Mac user I just play one on TV (work). So enjoy my new theme which I call Microsoft Windows Vista: SeanPiotrowski Edition!

For those of you keeping track I’ll be 27 on Sunday. 27.

P.S. I’m officially a college professor.

As you all know I am not voting for McCain & I’m not voting for Obama. I saw this contest and thought it would be an interesting execerise for me in my ability to gauge the country. Let’s see how right I am.

This Glen Beck Interview pretty much hits all the nails on the head as to why I’m not voting for McCain or Obama:

“You may be the most unintelligent person that I’ve ever seen critique a movie. Only a complete idiot could post a tribute to Rocky IV, and actually believe that Rocky wasn’t the best character! That may be the stupidest thing I’ve ever read, oh but the soundtrack is the greatest character right? Wrong, Rocky is one of the best characters of this or any century and you write this pathetic tribute to probably the best movie ever made, but while doing so… You ignorantly and inadvertanly bashed this spectacular movie. This was such a poor tribute that I regret ever stumbling onto it. It was so terrible that I couldn’t even get through the entire thing! Your terrible writing and continuous praise of the soundtrack as the “best” character made me sick to my stomach. But the worst part of this whole terrible little site that you control, is that you have a retarded following of drones whose biggest concern with your blasphemy is that you didn’t mention the robot! Or some idiot that thinks his dad looked like rocky in the 80’s You should all be ashamed of yourselves and please kindly remove yourselves from civilization, to further prevent the spread of people with IQ’s less than zero.

Thanks”

- RealMovieCritic August 1st, 2008 at 3:18 pm

This is pretty much the greatest comment I’ve ever gotten on so many different levels…