I lost my man cave!

I am now caveless. it's a sad state of affairs for a nerd. I have nowhere to display my nerdly wealth--Batman paraphernalia, my signed-by-Stan Lee and hand-colored Spider-man newspaper strip, my arcade cabinets and etc. I'll have to put my consoles in the living room and have a section of the garage for the rest, but that separation just feels wrong somehow. Worse, it isn't done yet.

You see, I moved out of my three-story home into one without a basement. It was my decision, so I can't blame anyone but myself. I just need to complain. I don't even technically own the new house, so I can't begin construction of a new cave until all the paperwork goes through. Right now my comic books are sitting inside a closet, unread and unloved. On the bright side, that closet is behind a shelf that opens up like the one in the old Batman TV show. I'm looking for a Shakespeare bust to put on the shelf that I can modify with a button.

The garage is huge and will make a great replacement cave. My dilemma is temporary. It still sucks! My wife is allowing me to build a cool shelving unit for most of my game systems in the living room. I'll be able to play NES on a projector screen. I'll post photos when it's all done. That said, when she wants to watch TV, I can't game. I guess that'll be better for my marriage, though. Any nerd who manages to find a wife who tolerates his hobbies is lucky indeed. Plus, I got her hooked on Lego video games and the occasional RPG, so she sympathizes with me a bit.

I traded my man-cave for two acres, a pool and a huge pond. Sadly, the pond needs to be treated for green algae and the pool needs a new liner; I can't fix either until my mortgage officially goes through. Maybe I can put up a sign next to the pond that says "Crystal Lake" and hang a hockey mask from it.

Ooh! I just figured out my next woodworking project!

Don't feel too bad for me. I still have everything I need to make myself a new Nerdhole, even if it isn't quite a hole anymore. I just miss my perfect little corner of nerd-paradise.

Do video games turn today's youth into quitters?

I am 42 years old, so I'm entitled to the occasional fit of "good old days" ranting. To me, the 1980's were halcyon days. Sure, we had no cell phones, no Internet, and no disc-based gaming. Video games were, at best, cartoonish or badly-pixellated renderings of objects and people that you interacted with on a 2D plane. You tended to see a bit of interference in the background of your TV set from other channels as you played on channel 3. Still, the games were fun back then. Plus, you actually had to have some skill to play them.

You were constantly challenged by the games you played. All games were in essence a form of competition. You were out to beat your last high score, or even better, your friends' high scores. There were levels, but most games had no end to them; they just looped around, at least until Super Mario Bros. changed that paradigm. Even then, you had to beat the game using only a set number of lives and continues.

You tried and failed and tried again and again, or you realized that you had wasted $50, which in that time was a small fortune to a kid. So you sat Indian-style on the living room floor for hours struggling through Bionic Commando. The first few times you failed to make it through, but eventually you learned the proper techniques and tricks and your skills developed to the point that you actually finished the game, to be rewarded with an awesome end-scene:

The point is that video games back then were challenging. You often lost, but you had to keep trying until you got it right.

Nowadays, video games are risk-free ventures. I say this as someone who loves these games, but notices that the difficulty factor is very low. Skyrim is crazy awesome, but the worst thing that might happen to your character is that he'll lose some nice loot and have to start back at the last auto-save. Don't get me started about the Lego games... The only challenge is from the brick-earning sections after you've finished the main story line. They remind me of the Barney game on Genesis.

 We bought this game for my baby brother, who soon realized that no matter how hard you tried, Barney couldn't be killed. If you jumped off a cliff, Barney would float back up holding a balloon. No enemies existed to do him any damage. There was no danger in the game, and even my baby brother got bored with it within a day and went back to trying to pass the first level of Sonic the Hedgehog.

So now, as a middle school teacher, I deal with a bunch of kids who are utterly distraught if they make mistakes. They don't want to have to struggle or work for a win. The concept of trying and trying again is alien to them. If they can't grasp and idea or skill the first time they try it out, they want to give up. "I can't do it!" they cry after one attempt.

It's the video games, I swear!

These kids need to play Dark Souls. Now, there's a game that will put some hair on a young man's chest! That game makes you fight for every win. If you fail to beat the first-level boss, you start all the way back over at the very freakin' beginning. For the first several tries, you despise the game. Some choice vocabulary may even depart from between your lips if you're not careful. That all just makes the final victory even sweeter, provided you stick with the game long enough to enjoy it. It's a life lesson that most kids haven't learned.

So recently I decided to introduce my kids to the world of the Atari 2600. I made them play each game enough to gain a fair amount of skill. To up the ante, I had my two youngest compete against each other for high scores. They played Pac-Man, Galaxian and Frogger. Now they want to keep playing because they enjoyed getting better and better with each try. It was a pretty sweet idea for family night if I do say so myself.

I asked them what they learned and they said that you need to keep trying even when things were difficult. I told them that was called perseverance. Then we ate some ice cream. After that, they asked if they could keep playing Atari and I gladly obliged.

Kids these days need a lesson in perseverance. It's a quality they sadly lack. It's an essential quality of a self-sufficient adult. I know video games aren't exclusively to blame, and I'm not suggesting Bethesda make the next Elder Scrolls nigh-impossible to beat. However, may I suggest that we play some of the classic, challenging games with our kids? Dust off the old Atari, NES or even Sega. You'll be pleasantly surprised!

What's up with the title?

When I decided to make a blog about my not-so-serious interests (my other blog, The Use of Reason, is all about politics and social issues), I had to go through several names before finding one that was both fitting and, well, available. Even this title is in use in another configuration: mine has a DASH between the words "the" and "nerdhole," whereas someone else is already using the whole thing run together.

The Nerdhole is what I call my basement, or man cave. The walls are covered in comic book paraphenalia and collectible super hero toys. There are two homemade arcade units. I have a projector screen for my newer game systems and an old-fashined entertainment setup for the older ones. There is a home gym (not as nerdy, but fun) on the other side, and one foosball table and one air hockey table tucked away in another area. It's technically underground, thus a Nerdhole.

I intend to post fun things here, like video game reviews, instructions about how to build your own arcade units, and generally nerd out on whatever pops into my head. There will be lots of handy links to help out with things. The comments section will serve as a forum for anyone interested enough to post something. All-in-all, I just wanted a forum in which to share my fun.

Well, I hope you enjoy the blog. I know I will.