Windows Vista has finally arrived! Many people have been asking us what are Stardock's plans? What can we do to take an excellent new OS like Windows Vista and make it better?

There have been a lot of articles on how users of Windows XP can get a lot of the visual benefits of Windows Vista using Stardock Object Desktop. And while that may be true, Windows Vista provides us a whole new canvas of cool things we can do.

For Starters: LogonStudio Vista

If you have Object Desktop already and Windows Vista, you can now change the way your Windows Vista logon looks with LogonStudio Vista.

We've developed a new format (.logonvista). While existing .logonxp files won't work on Windows Vista due to the significant change in the way logons are displayed, I have a feeling there will be no shortage of logons being made for Windows Vista.

LogonStudio Vista will be available for free when it's finished. If you want it now, you'll need to get Object Desktop.

Availability: NOW for Object Desktop users.

Your GUI your way: WindowBlinds 5.5

Windows Vista's new look -- Aero, looks awesome. I like it a lot. But I also like to personalize my UI to look how I want it to look. Luckily you can -- with WindowBlinds 5.5.

With thousands of different visual styles to skin the look and feel of Windows Vista, along with the ability to change color, saturation, and all kinds of other elements, Windows Vista users will be able to make Windows Vista look however they want it to look.

And for power users -- WindowBlinds cuts battery consumption over Windows Vista Aero significantly. On our internal tests, running Vista with a WindowBlinds skin gave back over 40 minutes of battery life on a Dell laptop. You can test for yourself, it's pretty consistent. And if that's not enough, WindowBlinds is faster too thanks to DWM caching.

Availability: NOW for Object Desktop users (in beta). Public release, February 5th.

Animated Wallpaper on-the-fly: DeskScapes

If you have Windows Vista Ultimate, you will be able to get Microsoft's new animated wallpaper extra called Windows DreamScene. It lets you play video as animated wallpaper.  If you like the computer generated animated wallpaper that comes with it, then good, we made it, including the one shown at launch and the default official one (animated Aurora).

Object Desktop users will be able to get exclusive animated wallpapers not available anywhere else. And they'll be getting our new program that lets Windows Vista Ultimate users have dynamic animated wallpaper. Dynamic animated wallpaper is generated on the fly and it's all done on the video card so even on a mid-powerful computing rig, you'll see virtually no CPU use and incredibly cool stuff.

Moreover, it supports a new format we've designed called .dream.  Amongst the various features it supports, one really straight forward one we think artists will enjoy -- credit. Look at the screenshot on the right and you'll see that we've extended the wallpaper dialog to support author info (which can be a link to a website).  Creating a good animated wallpaper is non-trivial and we figured artists would want to make sure their hard work gets credit and send them traffic.

Availability: As soon as Microsoft releases Windows DreamScene for Object Desktop users.

Gadgets: The Next Generation = DesktopX

Windows Vista includes the Sidebar. That's good.  Making sidebar gadgets is not particularly easy. That's bad.  But sidebar gadgets provide a standard format. That's good. But the native functionality of the Sidebar gadget APIs is painfully low. That's bad.

Enter: DesktopX 3.5. Nearly ready for beta, DesktopX allows users to export their creations as Windows Sidebar gadgets!  This is significant because of the massive functionality and API support built natively into DesktopX.  From a technological point of view, it's a superset of every widget/gadget implementation out there. With 8 years of development behind DesktopX and thousands of widgets, objects, and gadgets out there,  it provides a huge boost to Windows Sidebar gadgets and a great way for users to be introduced to the power of DesktopX.

Because DesktopX doesn't just make gadgets, you can build desktops (we even make an enterprise version of DesktopX for corporations wanting to create secure branded desktop environments).

Stardock also has developed a technology that allows users to create gadgets in .NET (including WPF gadgets). We'll be talking more about that soon.

Availability: Late February Beta for Object Desktop users

Changing Icons for Windows Vista: IconPackager 2.5

Changing the icons for Windows Vista is not quite as easy as previous OSes. For one thing, the folders are done differently -- they have "live previews".  But no worry, we've got that nailed down now and you can now even change the live folder preview icons and still get live previews! 

Availability: Early February in beta on Object Desktop.

Your own boot screen: BootSkin Vista

Stardock BootSkin allows users of Windows XP to change their boot screens. So what about Windows Vista users?  On Windows Vista, the default is not boot screen at all!  With BootSkin Vista, you'll be able to have your own high-resolution, high color boot screen of your choice.

Like BootSkin for Windows XP, when completed it'll be released as freeware.  But the initial beta will be on Object Desktop only.

Availability: Mid March for beta on Object Desktop.

Tweak Vista with...TweakVista!

We've partnered up with TweakVista.com to bring you a new program called TweakVista.  Designed both for power users and their friends and family, TweakVista lets users get into the guts of Windows Vista but also allows casual users to maintain their systems.

Many people reading this are probably the family "computer guy".  If you are, you'll definitely want TweakVista to hand out to people because it helps take care of the most common problems people run into with a Windows PC. But it also lets you dig into the guts of Vista to change undocumented settings and get more data on your system than..well probably more data than you really need to know.

Availability: Mid March beta.

A Dock for Vista: ObjectDock

If you have ObjectDock 1.5, you have the version that already runs on Windows Vista. But the good news is that we are busy at work on the next version of ObjectDock which is due out later this year. If you don't have ObjectDock (particularly ObjectDock Plus) grab it! You can get ObjectDock right now at www.objectdock.com.

Availability: Summer

Better Cursors for Vista: CursorVista

CursorXP is the defacto alternative to the Windows XP mouse cursors. On Windows Vista, CursorVista is being designed to make it even more powerful. Thanks to the new DWM (the composited, 3D surface that is the Windows Vista desktop), all kinds of fun should be possible.  We are getting fairly close to having a beta of this available.  If you have Windows XP, you can get CursorXP at www.cursorxp.com

Availability: Early Spring

And now a peek at Stardock's lab!

Working on stuff that's about to get released is very exciting. But the stuff that's just getting cooked up in the labs is just as exciting. When Windows Vista's RTM build was sent to us, we were able to start digging in and seeing what's possible. As video driver quality gets better and we get a handle on what parts of Windows are more easily extended than others, cool stuff results.

My #1 reason I like Windows Vista in terms of customization is that it's free from a CPU point of view.  Now that the desktop is a 3D surface, we can do all kinds of cool stuff without affecting system performance.

For instance, Microsoft's Windows DreamScene plays video as your wallpaper. Now, I've seen people say "You could do animated wallpaper on Windows with <insert hack here>." Please. What is possible and what is practical are two different things.  The only CPU used by DreamScene is in the decoding of video which is not a major deal now adays.  Other effects are completely done on the video card.

On Windows XP, we had to develop a DirectX interface ourselves to get universally good performance with this stuff (which people noticed in WindowBlinds 5).  But on Vista, everything's already on the video card, it's great!

Rise of the Super-Gadgets: Code-Name DesktopVista

With Microsoft providing a standard gadget format, Stardock can then concentrate its resources into what it does best -- making really cool technology.  Not a competitor to DesktopX, DesktopVista is designed to enable the creation skinnable gadgets.  That is, a system in which a standard gadget skin format can be created and used to skin gadgets.  Right now, it's just a technology. 

A New Style for Windows Vista: Code-Name StyleVista

Windows Vista is pretty polished. But it could be polished further. Enter StyleVista. This new program will let users alter the little touches that Microsoft has in Windows Vista that don't quite fit into skinning but also are just beyond what is included. Want a different blur effect? Want to change that Start button? StyleVista is for you.  We're still inventorying what we can and can't do with the DWM now that finalized video drivers are coming out so we'll have more news on this soon.

Build your own 3D desktop: Time for 3D modelers to get their day

For years, a significant percentage of artists were locked out of customization. 3D modelers might be able to make pretty rendered icons but beyond that, things were limited.  But now, thanks to a combination of Windows Presentation Foundation  (WPF) and Media Center Markup Language (MCML) we are exploring letting users take their 3D creations from Maya, 3D Studio (and if possible XAML) and turn them into working, fucntional 3D desktops. Not 3D in the sense that you move around the screen but rather where the objects you interact with are 3D.

What we can and can't do will heavily depend on the capabilities of WPF/MCML and the DWM which we're still exploring (as well as video drivers).  We hope to have something to show late summer.

Other Cool Stuff(TM)

People on Linux have been showing off XGL for awhile.  Anyone with Windows XP should try out WindowFX and know we've been doing window scaling, 3D dragging of windows, and all kinds of effects since Windows XP launched and we didn't have the benefit of a 3D accelerated desktop.  Now we do.  That's all I'm going to say on that.

It's going to be an exciting year! Stay tuned!

Previously (part 1, part 2) we have discussed that the amount of money professionals make has to do with the value associated with the task they are assigned to complete. The greater the value and the more of that task the person is responsible for, the more that person will make.  The easiest way to increase your value, therefore, is to increase your skill set such that you can accomplish those tasks more quickly and take responsibility for greater parts of it. 

If it takes 5 people to accomplish a given task and you are one of those 5 people, your salary is going to be split amongst those people. If you can learn skills that allow you to take responsibility for 2 of the 5 parts of the task, your value increases accordingly which will, in time, be returned in the form of higher salaries and bonuses (and if not, you should find a better company to work at).

Entrepreneurs are often people who can accomplish a valuable task largely on their own. The small businesses they create tend to stay that way because taking it to the next step requires a very different set of skills -- the art of managing people.  The reason to hire more people is so that more valuable tasks can be accomplished or that tasks can be accomplished more quickly.  The catch is that the capability of individuals varies by up to a factor of 100. That variance is largely due to poor work habits (poor time management, disorganized, or laziness).  As a result, the fledgling manager may hire 4 people only to discover that not only are they not accomplishing more tasks, they aren't accomplishing the previous tasks as quickly as the fledgling manager used to be able to do on their own. It is at this point that poor managers and good managers are separated from one another.

Good managers focus on accomplishing tasks and recognize that their team exists solely to accomplish that task. And different members of that team will contribute to the completion of a given task at different rates based on their capability.

Scenario 1: Fledgling manager

You've just become a manager. And you've got 4 people working under you to accomplish task A. Turns out though, that those 4 people have very different capabilities. Sally has good capability but poor time management skills -- she chit chats a lot and as a result isn't as effective as she could be.  Ted is a super worker. Heck, he could practically do the whole project himself. You can "fire and forget" with him. Bill, meanwhile, is incompetent. He just doesn't know what he's doing and won't venture outside his limited skill area. And Jon is just lazy. He'll do a little work, then spend his time on instant messaging or surfing the net.

The net result is that task A actually only gets done as quickly as you could have done it on your own. And the only reason it's only doing as well as it did is that you lucked out and got Ted who is not only doing all he has to do but is picking up the slack left by his friend Bill.

A bad manager might just be tempted to throw more and more on Ted. It's the easiest thing to do -- just assign Ted to almost everything and have Sally, Bill, and Jon do marginal pieces.  Besides being unfair, it's economically infeasible. Because if Ted is responsible for 70% of the work and Sally, Bill, and Jon are picking up the remaining 30%, is Ted being paid 7 times as much as Bill and Jon? Probably not. Eventually, Ted is going to find a new job (or be promoted elsewhere).

So what should the manager do in the above scenario? In my experience, the first step is to identify whether Sally, Bill, and Jon are salvageable. Odds are, at least 2 of the 3 of them are with the right manager.  But the manager has to decide whether his time is best used increasing the capability of his team or doing some of it himself.

Scenario 2: Experienced Manager

Now you've had some time to look at your team and realize that the task is not getting done as quickly or well as it should be.  Sally's slow because she wastes time on other tasks (socializing, or worrying about minutia). Her issue is one of motivation and inspiration. Good managers know how to motivate people and inspire them to focus on what needs to get done. So you talk to her about the tasks at hand and how she can better use her time to help move things forward not just for the sake of the project but to help herself as well. Result - she improves.

Bill's still incompetent but he's at least trying harder now and you've spent some time training him to increase his productivity. Unfortunately, you still have to check Bill's work because it's spotty. Sometimes he gets it right, sometimes he doesn't and it's seemingly at random. You'll have to evaluate whether Bill is worth keeping -- the time you're spending on training him is time you could be using to improve others who are much more productive (a 10% increase in the mega guy is worth more than a 50% improvement than someone who's barely functional).  But into that evaluation you'll have to include morale overall of firing people and the fact that Ted, your best worker, is good friends with Bill.

And Jon is just lazy and you decide to fire him. And to improve the performance of your team, you spend some of your time on the project directly.  Net result, task A is now completed 2.5X as fast as you could have done it alone. Of course, it now takes 4 people to do that task.  Is it worth it? Depends on how much your team costs.  That's another factor that many workers don't realize -- the more you're paid, the more you have to produce. Bill's survival on the team will likely depend on how much he's making.

Master Manager

Eventually you'll get a feel for when you need to do a given task (or sub-task) yourself and when to assign a subordinate. And you'll get a feel for when it makes sense to improve one of your workers versus when it makes sense to terminate them outright. But it takes time and experience. There is really no substitute for experience. It's an intelligence multiplied by time kind of thing.  Even Bill Gates learned, the hard way, that you can't just take productive workers and turn them into managers. It takes a real skill to it and few people are truly good at it which is why they tend to make more money.

Managers don't necessarily make more than workers though.  Some managers resent this but only because they either forgot or don't understand that it's about getting the task done.  In the above example, imagine if you terminated Jon but lacked the skills necessary to work on the task yourself but instead had to rely more on your super-guy Ted. Well guess what? Ted is eventually going to make more money than you because his contribution to the completion of task A will be greater than yours.  Managers have an inherent advantage in contributing the most to the completion of a task because they make the assignments, but that doesn't guarantee that the manager is going to be the one who actually contributes the most to the completion of a task.

Next we'll take it to the next logical progression -- the management of managers!

Stardock LogonStudio for Windows Vista has gone into beta for users of Object Desktop.  LogonStudio is a program that enables users to replace the Windows Vista logon screen with one of their own creation or use one made by others.  The new .logonvista format has been designed to be extensible so that as Stardock adds more features to the format, existing logons will continue to work.

We have created a new gallery on WinCustomize.com to support these new logons. Taking screenshots is a bit of a challenge since print-screen doesn't work when you're at the logon prompt in Windows Vista but Stardock plans to add support for making screenshot previews in an upcoming build.

If you don't have Object Desktop, now's a good time to get it. Object Desktop is Stardock's premiere suite of desktop enhancement utilities that includes WindowBlinds, IconPackager, DesktopX, ObjectBar, RightClick, SkinStudio, and many other programs that can completely transform the Windows desktop to your own design.  LogonStudio Vista is the first of the Windows Vista specific programs released (users of Windows XP have LogonStudio XP already).

Object Desktop Home Page

LogonStudio Vista Gallery (use THIS gallery for Vista logons, not the XP one)

Screenshots:

I wrote this on my personal page but it's worth talking about here too.

What determines how much money someone should be making? The easy answer is "market forces". But that's really a cop-out because it takes away control from the employee entirely.  People, especially those working in office environments, have significant impact on how much they make.

And it boils down to a relatively simple relationship. How much money the objective you are working on produces.

The higher the number A is, the more you make.  Where A is an objective. Some sort of task or project that generates income.

Of course, it's not normally quite like this. Usually the task involves more than just you.

The more people involved in A, the less you make per completed task. If having more people involved allows you to accomplish more tasks, then that's good. But that's not what happens to most people.  Most people simply cut themselves off from accomplishing more because they artificially pigeon-hole themselves into a specific set of tasks.

In the above example, task A may require some very disparate skills to complete. Skills that Sally and Bill have that you don't. So you "need" them to accomplish task A. The successful entrepreneur is the one who is able to learn lots of new skills in order to accomplish tasks without needing Sally and Bill.

What ultimately limits most successful entrepreneurs is that they don't learn how to manage people because they simply try to do it all themselves. The successful entrepreneur may still be a multi-millionaire so don't be too sorry for him or her. But they'd never hack it as a corporate executive in a Fortune 500 company.  That's because the task list is more like this:

That is, there are lots of tasks that need to get done. So entrepreneur with the ma/pa shop may only have a task or two that they work on in a given year. Having mastered the skills necessary to do the task largely alone, they take home the lion's share of the profits from that task. But the next step is the company which has several, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of tasks to complete.

But before we talk about that, let's review.  How much you make in a professional environment relies on how much the task you are working on is worth and how quickly you can get it done. The value of that task is split amongst the people you needed to accomplish that task.  You can make more by making sure the tasks you work on are valuable and by learning skills necessary to complete those tasks.

Not only must you learn those skills but you must take the initiative to demonstrate to others that you are capable of using those skills effective and efficiently.

But if you sit back and say "I don't know how to do X" where X is a skill necessary to complete a given task that you are part of accomplishing, then that's fine. But it means your value is diminished.

In my experience, what happens is that people who choose not to learn those new skills end up finishing their part of a given task and then move on to working on a different task (or just not working at all) that is worth vastly less than the primary task. 

So do yourself a favor -- learn as many of the skills as possible that are necessary to complete the tasks you are involved in.  Doing so will increase your value and hence how much you make.

In the next part, we'll talk about management.

What determines how much money someone should be making? The easy answer is "market forces". But that's really a cop-out because it takes away control from the employee entirely.  People, especially those working in office environments, have significant impact on how much they make.

And it boils down to a relatively simple relationship. How much money the objective you are working on produces.

The higher the number A is, the more you make.  Where A is an objective. Some sort of task or project that generates income.

Of course, it's not normally quite like this. Usually the task involves more than just you.

The more people involved in A, the less you make per completed task. If having more people involved allows you to accomplish more tasks, then that's good. But that's not what happens to most people.  Most people simply cut themselves off from accomplishing more because they artificially pigeon-hole themselves into a specific set of tasks.

In the above example, task A may require some very disparate skills to complete. Skills that Sally and Bill have that you don't. So you "need" them to accomplish task A. The successful entrepreneur is the one who is able to learn lots of new skills in order to accomplish tasks without needing Sally and Bill.

What ultimately limits most successful entrepreneurs is that they don't learn how to manage people because they simply try to do it all themselves. The successful entrepreneur may still be a multi-millionaire so don't be too sorry for him or her. But they'd never hack it as a corporate executive in a Fortune 500 company.  That's because the task list is more like this:

That is, there are lots of tasks that need to get done. So entrepreneur with the ma/pa shop may only have a task or two that they work on in a given year. Having mastered the skills necessary to do the task largely alone, they take home the lion's share of the profits from that task. But the next step is the company which has several, dozens, hundreds, or thousands of tasks to complete.

But before we talk about that, let's review.  How much you make in a professional environment relies on how much the task you are working on is worth and how quickly you can get it done. The value of that task is split amongst the people you needed to accomplish that task.  You can make more by making sure the tasks you work on are valuable and by learning skills necessary to complete those tasks.

Not only must you learn those skills but you must take the initiative to demonstrate to others that you are capable of using those skills effective and efficiently.

But if you sit back and say "I don't know how to do X" where X is a skill necessary to complete a given task that you are part of accomplishing, then that's fine. But it means your value is diminished.

In my experience, what happens is that people who choose not to learn those new skills end up finishing their part of a given task and then move on to working on a different task (or just not working at all) that is worth vastly less than the primary task. 

So do yourself a favor -- learn as many of the skills as possible that are necessary to complete the tasks you are involved in.  Doing so will increase your value and hence how much you make.

In the next part, we'll talk about management.

This week Norway banned Apple from selling songs via iTunes Music store in Norway. This was done on the grounds that Apple's DRM "Fairplay" forces users to play the music via iTunes which they feel infringes on the rights of users (though forcing users to not be able to choose to buy songs from iTunes apparently is a newly discovered freedom).

Europe's obsession with media playing technologies developed in the United States (as seen with its millions in fines against Microsoft) seems confined to media player.

No word yet on whether Norway plans to invade neighboring Finland to take out Nokia's diabolical plan of forcing people who want to play n-Gage games to buy a Nokia n-Gage. 

Gillette, maker of razor blades that force users to use Gillette razors declined to comment on whether they were concerned that Norway would target them next.

Years ago, I lived on the forums on WC. Not just WC but on forums all over the place. There was a joke once that if you said my name 3 times on a forum, I would magically appear and havoc would ensue.

So why did I stop?  Too busy? That's some of it. But a bigger reason is that I tend to not always be..the most politically correct guy around.

Or to put it another way, recently I got hooked on a new show after having multiple, independent people tell me I am just like a specific fictional character -- Dr. House on the TV show House. Not that it's a perfect fit (I don't think anyone would say I'm unethical) but I can be pretty cranky.

I'd say I'm more of a cross between Rearden from Atlas Shrugged and House. But it's still the same difference. I'm an evil, blood-thirsty capitalist. I've been an evil, blood-thirsty capitalist from day 1.  When the first skinning sites opened, I was there. 

Here's an article I wrote on the subject:

https://www.wincustomize.com/Articles.aspx?SID=1&AID=136943

Another reason I was gone is that I felt WC2K5 kind of sucked.  The ugly light blue look. The way the site was poorly organized or crashing or just plain slow. I just didn't like it.

And too many of the people hanging out were boring or at least boorish and elitist. I saw people being snide and rude to new users as if applying little bitmaps to your user interface is somehow an intuitive thing. So I stayed away.

I also didn't like how ratings were done. T-man and I argued about this. If you watch House, T-man is like Dr. Wilson (i.e. super nice).  I'm not nice. I don't think most of you should be allowed to rate skins. I originally had it that only other skinners could rate skins. But it got changed so that subscribers could also rate which really bugged me. But once a feature is given, it's hard to take it away.  But with WC2K7, we changed that.  Now ratings are weighted. So non-skinners who have subscriptions can rate but if a skinner votes, it counts for a lot more in determining the overall rating.  If someone hates that, you can start your own thread and complain there. Like I said, if I were total emperor and could turn back time, only skinners would be allowed to rate things at all. If I work hard on a skin, I don't want some random guy giving me a 1 and wrecking my rating.

Getting back to WC2K7...I really like it. If they can get IIS to quit crashing randomly (which is why sometimes it's really really fast and other times you sit there waiting 30 seconds) it'll be totally awesome.  I love the bread-crumbs.  I find it easy to navigate and much easier to write articles.

But we need to do more. We need to start following up on the Stardock failures of 2006. Admitting you have a problem is only the first step after all.

So anyway, my question to you guys is, is WC better off with the main administrator face being the volunteers along with Jafo and Zoomba who are nice? Or do you think it would work out if I started to increase my presence again even though I'm kind of a jerk that should be locked up in a lab coding stuff rather than telling users that I don't want them to ever purchase our software again?  

You can tell me the truth. I'm already in the fetal postiion.

It's been about a week now since the first Master Skins have gone up. And so we've had time to evaluate the results.

The results: They're definitely here to stay.  They've done significantly better than we had anticipated.  Or put another way, a skinner could potentially make a full-time living simply making Master skins.

I won't give away the sales figures for other authors but the results for the ones we've put up, which haven't done as well as what Treetog or Adni have done, have ranged from a couple hundred dollars to $500 or so in the first week. And those are dwarfed by what Adni has achieved.

I don't expect Master skins to become more than 1% of the total skins on WinCustomize.com. Or put another way, we'll tighten the moderation restrictions to ensure that they don't become too common because we don't want to give the impression of the site being about paying for skins.

Some people have loudly objected to the selling of skins.  I can't say I understand that. Labor is labor. If it's software, it's okay but if someone makes a skin it has to be free? That doesn't make sense to me.

But the benefits are significant: WinCustomize.com will continue to exist as a result.  The Master skins were WC's last chance.  The # of subscribers we were getting per month was not remotely close enough to justify the expense of the site. deviantART has been interested in providing a whole sub-section for Stardock's skinning stuff (people who think Stardock needs WinCustomize really need a reality check).  So it has been, at times, tempting to close WC and turn it over to deviantART.

A handful of dedicated community members have subscribed. But a site that gets over 3 million unique visitors per month but couldn't manage to get more than a few hundred of them to subscribe just wasn't cutting it.  So the Master skinners along with those who are purchasing their works are not just helping the skinners themselves but they are helping WinCustomize continue to exist.

There are also a lot of journeymen who, next month, we'll begin looking at nominating to become masters. All Masters will be expected to continue to support the community (we don't want Masters come to see us as just a store, we're supposed to be a community, if it ever became purely about the money then again, Stardock would take the most obvious economically justified course -- team up with our friends at deviantART to host the skinning content while we focused our resources on software only).

So the good news is that Master Skinning is doing very well.  One final note, the download count on Master skins is actually meaningless because people who buy them download them from store link, not from WC (we'll have to find a way to display something else other than download count which right now only counts those who re-download the skin after the fact).

Thank you for your support and we hope you are enjoying the new WC!

The skinning community is fairly unique in that it brings together a very wide range of people into something that is pretty specific.

Why change your computer from the default look and feel? The computer is a tool or a source of amusement. The way you get to your tools or games is irrelevant right?

And yet, here we are. Hanging out on a site that brings together millions of people from around the world. So why do we do it?

So tell us, who are you? What do you want? Why do you do it?

For me:

My name is Brad Wardell. I got into skinning because I spend a lot of time in front of the computer doing "work".

I started out as a game developer and foudn that it bugged me that other people should tell me how I would get my work done.  So I endeavored to find ways to change the way my computer worked to suit my own tastes.  Over time, I teamed up with like minded people who were developers.

And so now much of my professional career is creating stuff for like-minded people.  I live in Michigan with my wife and 2 small sons and baby daughter.