SGTMcClain dot Net

I know I am late with this, but I am currently watching “Steal this film” for the first time if you haven’t seen this movie please take the time to watch it when you have a free hour or so. However you don’t need to watch it to understand this post so I will save it for the end.

First of all I want to say, I don’t pay for cable or satellite TV anymore. I watch all of the TV I am going to watch over the internet… well I take it back I do have a slingbox hooked up at my fathers so that I can watch the Redskins (yeah I’m hurting right now) games. My point though is that I personally think that the way that we have traditionally consumed media is coming to an end soon, and traditional media will have to come around…

The domino’s are already falling, traditional over the air broadcasters… CBS, ABC, FOX are all streaming their shows online for free. However Movies Studios are still slow to come around to this model… and this is why people still download movies illegally. I argue that if more movies were made available online for a nominal cost then people would pay to see these movies.

I think Hollywood is getting greedy. Have you seen the cost of a movie ticket these days? $10 at least to view a movie in a crowded movie theater where you have to sit in relatively uncomfortable chairs around people you don’t know, and heaven forbid you drink too much of you 5 dollar bladder buster soda because its not like you can pause the movie and come back to it, you are captive to your money spent, and to see the part you missed you now either have to pay another $10 just to see the part you missed. Mind you that I and many of you have a more comfortable higher quality theater set up in the comfort of your home.

I have an idea that could fix this for the studios that would save them a bunch of money and make a bunch of money at the same time. Why not offer the movie in a stream and the 1st week that it comes out it cost $50 to access the stream, this way people can have movie parties at their house, kind of like pay-per-view fights (who by the way make millions from their products) then after the first week or month you take $10 or $15 off the cost of the movie, then after about 3 months you release the DVD’s, Blue-Ray, or download for between $10 or $20. I understand that this would kill the movie theater business, though it doesn’t completely have to because they could still distribute their movies in the streaming fashion and people that just wanted to go out to a movie could, though it would greatly reduce the amount of movie theaters around… Or are they “too large to fail”? This model of distribution would save the studios money in distribution and advertising because it cost very little to offer these streams over the internet.

I argue that the people who download movies and music weren’t going to pay for it anyway in most cases and in the other cases its all about access. There are people that are in places where they can’t get to a theater but they have access to the internet. I am sure that these people, if given the option to buy a movie at a high quality when the movie comes out would gladly pay for it, but they don’t have the access. So when they get the opportunity to obtain a movie that they wanted to see at low quality for free or very low cost they will get it that way just because its available.

I hope that the studios learn what the over the air television studios have learned and the music industry is starting to learn, the information age is about availability, if you can reach your customers they will gladly pay a fair price for your product, but if you make it hard to access or make it too expensive your customers will find other (free or really low cost) methods of getting your product, and its not because they are thieves or “pirates” its because you have placed your product out of their reach.

Please enjoy the movie below, its runtime is about 1 hour.

BTW – Thank you hulu for allowing us to view and repost your content anywhere legally!!!

This post is in response to a post I just read on Black Voices “Did Tyler Perry Kill Black TV”

First of all it feels like a weight has been lifted off of my shoulders it feels good to feel a passion to blog again!

Ok IanCogneto makes a good point in his post “Did Tyler Perry Kill Black TV” while he doesn’t say that Tyler Perry is directly responsible for the disappearance from black tv shows he does notice that it is a huge coincidence.

Now while I don’t disagree, I have to ask the question, isn’t this what we asked for?  Now before you get upset with my statement I want you to think about this on many of the major TV shows and broadcast on TV currently there are powerful black actors playing roles in those shows.  CSI (Lawrence Fishburn), House (Omar Epps), V (Morris Chestnutt).  Remember wanting to get rid of separate but equal… well they say be careful what you wish for.

The problem with this is while its great for the actors that do get gigs it seems like there must be a lot of black actors looking for work.  What I am really surprised about is the fact that there are no activist out in the streets over this… Wheres Al Sharpton… Jesse Jackson…the NAACP.. somebody anybody… where are you?  Oh thats right… they are all stuck watching black reality TV and God awful award shows.

People the only way we are going to get change is to either demand it or take it… Personally I think that we are way to talented a community not to do more, and with the way media is changing we can make it work for us.  Why aren’t we creating more content, I say if hollywood won’t support us we should support ourselves.  We don’t need hollywood support to make a web broadcast and thanks to Roku you can watch internet video right on your TV for free.

I’m not an actor just a tech geek and military paralegal, I don’t know how to make a TV show but I know how to get things working on the internet, if someone out there has an idea or a show I am willing to work with you to get it online and figure out how to get it to this and other devices to get it out to the masses.  Or if you know of people creating web TV shows spread the word, we can sit forever and complain about the system not being fair… or we can get out and make changes… I for one am willing and ready to make the change, but I can’t do it alone, its going to take us coming together as a community.

I have been reluctant to talk about whats going on with me for the past few months because I have been facing potential charges of assaulting a superior NCO, disobeying a direct order, and disorderly conduct.  Yesterday the case was closed so I feel that its finally alright to talk about most if not all of what I have been going thru.  I am not writing this to cause any more issues between myself and my command, only as a point of information for my true friends and family, so that I don’t have to tell everyone one at a time.

First of all I would like to give honor and praise to God because it is thru God that I have been brought through this very rough time in my life, I felt for sure at the beginning of this that I would lose my entire career, or at the very least I would be losing the ability to work as a military paralegal, a job that I absolutely love to do.  I made a promise to God to start attending church more if I made it thru this time, and I intend on keeping that promise, I am placing this here so that everyone can keep me on track with that, because again it has been thru Gods grace that I have been able to make it thru.

Ok story time I suppose, as I said above I was accused of doing a lot of things the only one I admit to doing and that I know I was wrong for was disorderly conduct.  I did lose my temper that day and pound my fist on a table inside of the housing office as I stormed out of the door.  However, everything else I was accused of I still maintain that I did not do.  I know that there is a higher power at work here because I know they wanted to crucify me.  I know if they ever get wind of this blog it could spell disaster for me, but I feel like this is my space where my thoughts are allowed to flow.  This is my therapy, and for the past 5 months I have been unable to sleep and I have been suffering a deep depression the likes of which I wouldn’t place on my worst enemy.

Needless to say while I was only eventually charged with the disorderly conduct, my unit is getting their pound of flesh:

One pound...one ounce at a time

1 oz = being placed in debt to the army for BAH I was authorized to collect (more on this subject later) – this has greatly impacted the savings I acquired while deployed to Iraq.

1 oz = being denied the ability to provide a place for my children to reside when they are with me.

14 oz = the exact number of days of extra duty and restriction I will have to pull to get this event completely behind me.

I will eventually get around to telling the full story about everything that happened, but I want to make sure that I am in a safer place first, because I am very much still in the lions den wearing a large raw steak around my neck.  Thank you everyone who has been there to support me from my family and friends to my military family, and anyone else who put their good names on the line to help me in my time of need.

This event has helped to open my eyes to something though, this military life is very fragile and all it takes is a few people to destroy everything that you have worked hard for.  I have focused my energy for far to long on improving for an organization that can still take my entire lifestyle away with the stroke of a pen, all because of a personal vendetta.  I have discovered that I need to work on something more stable and that no one can take from me without good cause… with that said I will end this with an official announcement.

On 1 January 2010 I will be opening a web graphics/design and consulting business.  I have figured that with all the knowledge I have about how the internet works, I should figure out a way to get make some money from that knowledge.  I know the way forward will be shaky but I will stay strong in my faith and true to my heart! There will be more to follow at a later date. Thank you again for reading and I look forward to posting about more positive things in the very near future!

I apologize if this was hard to read or even to follow my train of thought, I just was trying to get this off of my chest.. so that I can begin to move forward with my life!

I started writing this as a rant but then I figured it should be a guide, I figure why complain when I can try to help.  I am starting with guiding facebook users in how to get some value on twitter.  .

Ok being a user of both platforms I always am running into people that say I won’t use twitter because of this or I wont use Facebook because of that, I am here to say that both of these types of people are missing the boat completely, at least from my point of view.

Twitter is nothing like facebook, though it can be used similarly it is vastly different.  Twitter is like having a soapbox to talk to the entire world about anything you desire, while facebook is a small community made up of people you know.  Personally I think everyone should have a presence in both places but I don’t think the two should mix, in other words, I wouldn’t suggest for anyone to open up their Facebook profile to the world, and I don’t think you should isolate your twitter to just people you know.  Doing either of these limits the usefulness of each product in my opinion and I feel you get much more value in using these for their strengths.

Again while reading this remember:

Facebook: Close Friends, acquaintances and Family

Twitter: EVERYBODY ELSE

Occasionally you might get some cross over, twitter followers you get to know on a more personal level may become your facebook friends and friends from facebook may start following you on twitter but I at least try to keep the two worlds separate.

Ok I have to admit I was in the camp with the people that use facebook and wouldn’t use twitter.  I honestly looked at twitter as a bunch of status updates and the like, granted I was looking at the web page.  But I didn’t understand the concept of social networking at the time and how valuable a live stream of information could be useful.  That and twitter has to have the most god awful web interface known to man.  Heres my hint for people who use facebook and looking into twitter, if you want to find out what the big deal about twitter is don’t use the web site… Once you create an account set your picture and leave.  Don’t come back until you have a better feel for twitter, otherwise you will get frustrated and leave never to return.

The key I have found to twitter is the use of applications to organize the streams of information.  For a newbie I would recommend Seesmic or tweetdeck then before you actually start following people do a few searches for things you are interested in.  Once you have done that search start following the people that are talking in those searches…

But heres the key don’t be a silent observer, most people wont know your even there so you still wont get the point of twitter.  Unlike on facebook where most times you only comment if people are saying something directly to you, most people on twitter are saying things to get responses from the world, so comment, say something anything.  That way people know you are there and once they know your there they will start to interact with you.

On twitter a closed mouth doesn’t get fed so talk, heck you don’t even have to interact some times, just start ranting about something on your mind and eventually your bound to attract some attention.

Oh I left out a very important part… in the beginning don’t block your tweets… at least until you get a few followers, again this way people know that your their so that they can interact with you.  Once you get a few followers (about 20-30) that interact with you on a regular basis its cool to block your tweets because when your followers @ reply to you their followers will see it and if they are interested in hearing (reading) what you have to say they will request to follow you and you can be a bit selective about who you allow to follow you.

Also quick warning… there are a few apps for facebook that will pull your twitter stream into facebook and the apps for twitter can also post to facebook, I strongly suggest not updating automatically into facebook because this will utterly confuse your friends on facebook.  You can use the twitter apps to update facebook but only do it either when you have something to say that effects both crowds or just to update facebook only, and then immediately switch it back.

Both Seesmic and Tweetdeck allow you to see your friends on facebook’s status updates and comment on them, they also allow you to like status updates, so I also find these tools helpfully in keeping me up-to-date on whats going on on facebook.

The most fun you can have though is watching a TV show while on twitter, if you don’t believe me, try watching something like an awards show or a popular TV show, search for the shows name in one of the applications and just watch the stream.  I will get on hash tags in a later post but if you watch for long enough you will probably get the picture.  This is how I met most of the people I follow now.

I will probably add more to this as time goes on but this is just my intro for people that are curious about the twitter phenomenon but don’t quite get what its all about, I hope this helps, feel free to comment or tweet me @sgtmcclain if you get lost along the way.

Stay tuned for part 2 Facebook for Twitter users.

Ok I know if my ex reads this post I may get an earfull so to her I apologize in advance.

As most of you know I am reading Hill Harpers new book “The Conversation” and it has gotten me thinking about why my marriage didn’t work. Now I am not going to go on about some of the bigger details, I am going to try to focus on me and why I couldn’t get it together on my side.

I can honestly say that when I got married I was scared out of my mind. My daughter had just been born a few days before, I was on leave from Germany, I loved my ex wife but I didn’t know if I wanted to be married or not. If you had asked me a few months earlier I would have been all for it, the thing is the marriage I had based my thoughts on marriage on was falling apart right in front of me. My parents had been married for 26 years and they were in the midst of an ugly divorce. All I could think about was that if they could end like that after 26 years what chance do I have at maintaining a marriage?

I remember that it was 4 days before I was supposed to return to Germany before I made up my mind to go thru with it.

Looking back I know I could have been a better husband, but I don’t know if i gave 100% to our marriage. Looking back it always seemed like I was holding back.

Now since I am being completely honest about this it’s confession time. While I am good friends with my ex-wife now I am unsure if iwas truly friends with her before or even during our marriage.

Thinking back I remember disliking various little things about my ex that go all the way back to when we were dating. I don’t recall if I ever brought them up to her but I do remember them becoming major irritations for me as our marriage progressed. I am not going to break down the details of what they were but the fact that I had them more than likely helped to rot away our relationship. For all of this I owe her an apology.

It upsets me that I am learning so much about relationships now that I am not in one any longer, but at least I am learning for the future, whatever that may bring.

I have always heard it said that the reason why black fathers have a hard time staying around for their kids has to a lot to do with how slave owners would sell and trade the male slaves off shortly after a child was born to them, and while I don’t doubt that this is true after reading the first chapter “The Conversation” by Hill Harper something else stood out to me as an epic turn of events for families in America. It was called the “Man-in-the-House Rule”

Basically to sum everything up the Social Security act of 1935 created the “Aid to Families of Dependent Children” (AFDC) program. This program gave support (read: welfare) to single parent families where that single parent was unemployed. The problem with this was that for the first 33 years that this program existed there was a rule in place that denied families assistance if there was a “man-in-the-house”. This was basically defined as if the mother was living with or having relations with, any single or married able bodied male, that man was considered to be the substitute father, even if the man wasn’t supporting the child. Continue reading »

I know my words are going to come of as blasphemous to some of you and for that I apologize if I step on any toes… but this is where my heart is right now. My friend may not have been perfect but she was a good woman with a kind heart that loved her family and her kids above anything. I know everyone will say it was part of God’s plan but I can’t believe that, to take a mother from her kids… I wont believe that, not it this way… I don’t know all the details behind why my friend is gone from this earth but I am angry and sad… Angry mostly at myself for not doing more to show her that I was still there for her, the last time I saw her I saw her wasn’t under the best circumstances and I wish I could just put my arms around her now and say I’m sorry… I’m not saying we fought or anything else but life is way to short for some things. Those of you that knew me and Helen know how much I love her… I miss my friend so much its hard to keep my words cohesive… I can’t really think of anything else to say so I will just leave this note with one of my favorite memories with Helen. It was at the National Drill Classic… she was the drill team commander but compaired to the other schools our drill team was kind of like the bad news bears, most of the other schools had money so they had brand new uniforms while Fairmonts were faded… (I know yall remember them pickle suits) I don’t think any of them were faded to the same shade of Green. I remember before we went on Helen came to me literally shaking and was saying she didn’t know if she could get out there and be the drill team commander… she was so scared… she wanted to quit and walk away. I told her she would be fine and that she had the easiest job of anyone out there… all she had to do was give the commands.. Well when Helen got out on the drill floor you couldn’t see one hint of the fear she had when we were talking… She stepped out bold like she was the baddest person there… She reported to the judge and when she was done she cut her eyes at him in a way that only Helen could. The she proceeded to take the drill team thru their exhibition, and she gave it everything she had and you could see it show thru the entire drill team. Well we waited hours to get the results and they started to announce the winners… 3rd place… not us… oh well we gave it everything we had… the other schools had money so you know it was no big deal… 2nd Place… the Drill team we thought should have won first… but you know it was no big deal… we definitely knew we didn’t win now… we were just sitting back waiting to go home… and then they annouced first place… The Hornets…. Fairmont Heights I don’t think anyone in our section moved… I think we thought it was another Fairmont Heights… hell thinking back that pause seems long as hell… then someone said thats us…And our section exploded… Helen ran down the bleachers and stood up there just beaming… Thats my friend thats the Helen I will always remember her standing there accepting the first place trophy on behalf of her drill team… You will always be in my heart… I love you Helen!!

Ok I have been racking my brain about this for the past few days and I figured that since I had a forum here I would use it.

I have been shown an opportunity for a certain marketing opportunity that cost very little to be a part of but has the potential to make a decent amount of money.  I’m not going to say which one for my own personal reasons but I would like to put out there what my concerns are and then hopefully get some feedback from others on if my thought process is sound and if it would be a good idea or not.

Ok first off I know that when dealing with MLM their is potential to lose some money if you don’t hold up your part of the deal, in other words lets take Amway for example, you pay a fee to use their serivce so that you can sell items under the Amway banner, this also allows you to invite others to join under you, now by doing this you make a percentage of anything they sell and reap some of the kickbacks for every person they get to sign up… and so on and so forth down the line.  Your end of the bargin is that you will keep pressing to either sell more product or sign up more people, if you do eventually you will do enough of either or both to cover you annual fees and then start to make some type of profit.

Personally thats were I think the real money is, lets look at it this way… and granted this is losely based on the MLM I am looking at.  This one cost you $10 a month or $120 a year to be a part of.  Now for every person you get to sign up and pay the $10 a month you make $1 or 10%, I know that doesn’t sound like much but thats when the MLM starts to play in… each time a person that you signed up signs up someone else you get $1 for that transaction, and it repeats up to 5 times down the line, but thanks to branching that could turn into a whole lot of money if you and the people below you have their hustle on.

The reason I say this is good for the company is that for every $10 spent they make a minimum of $5, thats if everyone one has done their job… however if some one is lacking or the person does no work they make $9 or $10 depending on if the person that is doing nothing joined with or without a sponsor… but most have a sponsor so lets just say $9.

Again I see the potential to make money but I also see the potential to lose some, but that isn’t my major concern, my major concern is you… yes you, reading this right now.  What will your perception of me be if I start to peddle an MLM your way?  To me it looks like a fairly good opportunity and since it is involving technology it is a perfect fit for me.  But I value each and every person that reads my blog and if I start talking about it here would you shy away from reading my blog because I may link to my MLM?

I am also considering finding ways of labeling my content so that if I do start up in this it is clearly labled and if you want nothing to do with the MLM part of me then you can avoid those posts all together and move on to content that is a bit more to your liking.  Again for me this is all about being open and honest with my readers, though I only have a few I truly cherish each and every one of you.

Thank you for reading this and please comment on this so that I know how you all are feeling about this.  I think I have worked out a way for you to use your twitter account to comment so feel free to comment that way as well, thank you for your time!

A few days ago I was having a conversation with someone and it struck me that thanks to the political correctness that is pushed constantly here in america the forms of racisim have some what shifted.

The person I was talking to was a black female, and she was intent on blaming every problem she had on the fact that everyone she worked with was racsist.  You know if I didn’t know any better I would think it was plausable seeing that she is the only black person that works in her office, but since I know the other people in her office I am forced to think that unless they are really good at hiding their real selves then she way off on her accusations.

She asserted that they have never liked her because she was black, but in a totally seperate conversation with one of the people in her office, a white male, who just so happens to be my roommate.  I found out that she came in to the deployment late and broke a system that was running very effectively.  Personally I can see how people would be a little standoffish towards a dictator.

This is brings me to my point, we as black people have got to get over this hypersensitivity towards people over race.  Why are we so quick to pull the race card when, at least in my experience, their are many other factors to why a person treats you a certain way.  I know I am going to catch a lot of flack for this but these are my thoughts and this is my page, if you disagree feel free to comment or leave.

In my opinion true racists are not going to be in your face with their racisim, they are going to do their dirt in the shadows.  Add to that if you are a standoffish person then people are going to be standoffish towards you.  Why would anyone want to be friendly to someone who acts like because your skin color is different from theirs they have to have a stronger personality towards them.  But when it comes to members of their own race they open up nearly completely.  That act in itself is racist in a way.

My father, while really scholarly, has racist tendencies and in some ways I understand, he has had death threats from the KKK, he has been passed over for jobs he was more than qualified for by less qualified white people in his time, so I can empathize with his position, but I am not here to say its right.  The issue these days are young blacks growning up who have never been discriminated against thinking that everytime someone of a different race does something that they don’t like its because they are a racist.  Honestly its a weak cop out and we have to get past this if we are ever going to be able to move forward.

Personally I feel like if we are ever going to get ahead we will have to stop living in the past and start focusing on the future, and if you do find racisim in your your world just try avoid it and move on to something more positive.

You would think that the military of all places would make it a bit easier on guys that are trying to survive and do the right thing by their kids, but I’m here to tell you they don’t give a rats butt about guys that want to do the right thing and I feel it puts guys in the position to do the wrong thing.

As most of you know I am currently deployed to Iraq and I am preparing to redeploy to the states, and I am having the hardest time finding somewhere that I can afford.

Heres my situation, in case you haven’t heard all of it, I have two kids that I pay child support for, and my payments are just a little less than my BAH (Basic Allowance for Housing), but I also need to find a place to live with the rest of my paycheck, and pay utilities. I can’t move into the barracks because as far as the army since I am drawing BAH I cannot stay in government quarters, which I understand.

What I am frustrated by is the fact that they just opened a new housing unit on the installation that I am stationed at which is very affordable and close to post. The problem is the fact that I don’t have enough rank to stay there.

The logic behind this confuses me. Lower ranking soldiers who make less money have to search the economy to find a place to live if they are “geographical bachelors” but higher ranking soldiers, who make more money, can stay at this very affordable location that is close to post.

I know some people will say well just get promoted and you don’t have to worry about it. Well trust and believe I am doing everything in my power but in the mean time I am going to either have to live over 30 minutes away from post for affordable housing or live near post and have to stretch my budget to be able to afford a place to stay.

Yes I could get a roommate but after living in a sardine can for nearly a year with a roommate I am not real keen on that idea.. I need some personal space.

I am starting to understand why some guys don’t pay child support. I empathize but don’t sympathize.

However I would just think that the Military would see the position that it puts families in thanks to frequent deployments and understand that hey, people get into bad situations and instead of helping the situation out some it puts the hardest working and lowest paid Soldiers in a position where they have to choose between keeping a roof over their own heads and making sure their kids have what they need to survive and flourish.

Don’t worry about me… I will find a way for myself… I always do.