The USS Quad Damage

Seth‘s written some fairly great financial advice. It’s easy to follow and guaranteed to work. There’s only one problem: No one will listen. Well, no one who doesn’t already know will listen. The problem is simple. Finance has a lot of momentum. You don’t know that you’re getting crushed until there’s nothing you can do about it any more. It’s like… global warming, I guess.

There’s exactly one way to learn about good financial management: Play an RTS against someone who is good, or a skirmish against a good bot. Nothing will show you how much good resource management is at the beginning of a game until the twentieth odd game when you realise that someone wasting that 200 odd req. was what caused the tide of battle to turn. Eventually, you’ll get the hang of getting a good build going. Eventually, you’ll realise what you need to do to stop being overrun — and it’s all about resource management. Don’t get me wrong, there’s often a ton of good battle strategy there too. Knowing when to run away and rebuild your army in DoW is important. But without the economy, you’re not going to win, because the other guy is seriously rolling in it, so he can spam his units against you, and you have to work really hard only to get pwned.

If you want to teach your kids about good financial planning, get em to play DoW.

I didn’t really like men’s tennis. I grew up in the day of Sampras, when he would pretty much rely on his serve to win (not that the rest of his game was bad, but purely because his opponents would see so few opportunities against him that they’d need to capitalise. Agassi was a breath of fresh air in these times, but the most fun guy to watch on a tennis court was Chang, who would chase the ball relentlessly. Unfortunetely, he wasn’t as big as Agassi, and Agassi went on to play for years, but Chang seemed to have only a brief stint on the world stage.

In a period like that the girls comp was much more fun. Hingis was ruling the roost and the Williams sisters had just started playing on the "world stage". Actually, I started watching around the Monica Seles time, and vaguely remembered her being awesome good, and really hated that she lost games against Hingis when she should’ve been doing a lot better. OK Hingis was a bitch, but I really liked her (you could call her a female McEnroe, almost) but anyway. Seeing this sort of tennis was really interesting, and couple that with the fact that you get to see pretty girls in short skirts, well… women’s tennis wins!

Now, Men’s tennis is far more exciting, with people like Baghdadis, Federer, Tsonga, and of course, Nadal. Federer is a fairly boring player, but putting him up as the "perfect player" kinda makes the whole scenario exciting. I couldn’t get enough of the Australian Open Men’s matches this year. It was exciting, heart pounding action from start to finish in most of these matches. Nadal didn’t even get to the final then, and now he’s beaten Federer and become world number one. The runner up was the wildcard, Tsonga, and he played some incredible tennis. I was freaking the fuck out.

Now, the world number one for men is Nadal, and the Women’s number one is Ana Ivanovic. She is pretty much the only reason I watch women’s tennis any more. She also has a blarg. I’m not just talking about how stupid beautiful she is, or how good she is at her game. It’s her flaws that make her really stand out. She pretty much lets herself all hang out, emotionally. You can pretty much see in her eyes and in her game what she’s going though, what she’s thinking. She’s inconsistent and it’s mesmerising. Perhaps it’s just that she’s young and naive (born in ‘87), but it’s this sort of flashes-of-brilliance play coupled with "brain farts" which make the games exciting. You know she’s capable of a lot, but it’s watching her "grow up" which is most exciting.