My Little Helper
August 10th, 2005Willa decided to take it upon herself and “help” me to see how much time I spend playing video games in a week. Ahh, isn’t she helpful?! :roll: She conducted a study last week on my much maligned pastime, concluding that I spend 31% of my free-time playing vids. She thinks that’s crazy. I say it’s perfectly fine! Regardless, it’s all in how you interpret the numbers. I’ll give you a quick run-down of how she did this study.
She took notes on all the times I played Xbox over the past week (July 31st - Aug 6th). Here is the actual note:
She added up the hours played and compared that number with the total number of “free-time” hours I have in a week. Apparently I have 29 hours of “free-time” and I have no idea how she came up with this number, but here is the paper with her calculations:
And there it is. 31%.
The results of this study have been repeated to me many times over the past few days, along with the occasional barb about how bad it is for me to be sitting that much, or that by doing that much pixel-crack I am killing off my brain cells. Obviously she is overreacting and the results of this study are pretty sketchy for quite a number of reasons:
- The study was done using data from just 1 week of observations. This isn’t enough time to get an accurate representation!
- She is not seeing the whole picture. The fact that I play video games for a 1/3 of my free-time in a week means that the remaining 2/3 of that time is spent with her, which is pretty good I think. :-D
- If I am actually playing video games that much, so what? I’m exercising my brain. It’s not like it’s going to kill me.
The fact that Willa conducted a full-bore study on my video game playing is evident that she is a little jealous that the Xbox commands so much of my time. I can accept that because she is a girl after all. I’m going to have to find a solution to this that will pacify Willa’s rage towards the Xbox, or else I fear my Halo time may become seriously endangered.
August 10th, 2005 at 6:36 pm
Nice work Willa! For anyone who does not know about how I feel about Nick’s game playing please refer to my response to the post nick made about not purchasing anymore video games until the next dorky game machine comes out or whatever that crazy ranting that he made was.
This study concerns me for one main reason. Because you put Willa’s actual paper up, I can see that there are two full days when you did not play halo at all. This seems a little out of character. Were you out of town? Was the xbox in the shop? Does willa have a hidden camera to record the hours you played while she was sleeping?? I bet she doesn’t. I will consider this 31% estimate to be drastically low. My guess would be closer to 45%. Sorry to burst your bubble, good work willa
August 10th, 2005 at 9:02 pm
I am only left with questions.
-Is it the game specifically?
-Is it because Halo 2 is bad for you?
-What if you took up another hobby?
-What if you just watched television for 10 hours a week?
-If one third is halo 2 and the other two are with Willa- Do you ever have time to yourself?
-if she is sleeping why does the time count against you?
-If you played less than 10 hours a week, is it even worth having an XBOX?
-What if you spent those 10 hours hanging out with ferg? Would that be better?
-What if you played 20 hours one week and then did not play for 3 weeks? would that be better?
-What amount of time would be suitable?
-Have you considered marriage counseling?
-What is the win-win?
-does win-win exist?
-What if you went to say el gato’s house and played there? Would it be better because you are out of the house?
-What if you played the same amount of time that Willa watches television?
-is it less ? is it more? HOw many hours of tivo do you guys save a week?
-What specifically is it about the game playing that is bad for you?
-time inside?
-no time with her?
-bad for your health?
It sounds like a serious problem. I can’t quite believe it, but I do understand. ish.
It could be worse.
My concern is that if one of you conceeds, it could leave you both unhappy and it could cause one of you to hold something against the other in the back of your mind.
Good luck.
I hate to take a side on any issues, I hope that my views here are somewhat objective.
As my roomate would say ” atleast you are not in darfur.”
one love,
the beast from the east.
August 11th, 2005 at 6:44 am
If 10 hours is 31%, that means you only have approximatley 34 hours of freetime. do you work on the weekends? Are you only awake for 5 hours on the weekend? whats the deal with that?
August 11th, 2005 at 9:21 am
I’m not going to address each of your issues Scotty, however I will clarify the issue of how free time was calculated. Free time was calculated by determining how many hours Nick has available to do anything non work related on particular days. First I calculated that on the days Nick is working in Bellevue, he gets home at approximately 7pm (sometimes later) and we usually are not finished with dinner until 8pm (at the earliest). So, for those three days of the week, he has “free time” from 8pm until 11pm (3 hours) which is when we usually try to be in bed by. For the two days of the week Nick works from home I calculated his free time from 6pm until 11pm b/c he works until 5 some days and then dinner fixing and eating takes time too. So, on those days he has 5 hours of free time. Then, on the weekends, my calculations were lower b/c often we’ll be doing stuff all day one of the days, and he won’t get to play until the evening, similar to how much free time he might have on a weekday when he’s working from home. That is how I came up with the 5 hour number. Some weekend days he might not play at all, if we have plans with friends in the evening, etc. So, that is why I only estimated 10 hours of “free time” for the weekends. Obviously sometimes this is greater, but then again sometimes his time avaible during the week is less too, so it all evens out. Anyway, I think when you calculate really how much free time is available in any given week, it is drastically less than you might think. Especially when you factor in time for eating, showering, dressing, going to the bathroom, grocery shopping, meeting Dean, watering bonsais, taking out the trash, doing dishes, doing laundry, adding music to your iPod playlist, etc. After subtracting all of those things from your free time, then how much is left? Do you see my point now?
August 11th, 2005 at 11:27 am
I am a bit clearer on how you are determining free time. Although it seems a bit vague because you seem to subtract almost any activity from the free time. I just think that 30% of his free time seems a bit of a overstatement. With the examples that you gave, you could basically qualify any activity(ie eating, downloading songs on to your ipod playlist) as taking away from the total amount of free time number. So here is a question for Nick. How many hours of free time do you think you have? (no pressure buddy) OK
one love,
the instigator
August 11th, 2005 at 3:44 pm
I would say that the amount of time I have “free” is nebulous and changes all the time. The fact is that I NEED to have my pixel-crack fix frequently throughout the week, some weeks more so than others, and Willa is going to have to accept it!
August 15th, 2005 at 9:59 am
all I i know is that you are falling way behind on your 10 hours this week. where were you this weekend? you said you were gonna play 6 pm my time on sat? whats the deal with that?