That’s what we call it. Straight from the Jewish Old Testament, every 7 years all debts were forgiven and it was a time of celebration. So, how does that translate over to the boys in our house in 2008?
| Simple: PlayStation. |
| Accuse us of being controlling or applaud us for limiting computer use, but we allow both Evan and Colin 30 minutes a piece per day to play on the PlayStation (and folks, it’s play; incredibly difficult to market PS2 playing to an education or any marketable skills). See, we’re in our first year of even having a PlayStation in the house…it’s the first video gaming system we’ve ever have had. Sure, they’ve played MarbleBlast and TubeTwist and BridgeConstructionSet on the eMac (all from GarageGames.com). |
| Then–and I’m not sure where this came from–we got the boys LegoStarWars for the PC and the boys would play the game on Lois’ laptop. After hitting the keys so dang hard _and_ having a fairly successful garage sale one weekend last June, we told the boys that we’d consider getting a PlayStation. So, I priced them against the new systems and found that the PS2 would be sufficient for our purposes:mainly, to have the boys play StarWarsLego on the PS2 and not on Lois’ laptop. |
| But the day of Jubilee precedes the PS2 and applied to the computer games. The idea is that one day every 49 days we’d allow the boys to play computer games or PS2 for the whole day (alternating turns, obviously). We figured that would be a healthy thing to do in all of our limiting and time keeping. |
| So, today is the Day of Jubilee and the boys are pleased and we are fine with them playing, for one day out of 49, a couple more hours of video games. |
| Now, back to the PS2 story (and again, I think you know what happened). When we just had the GarageGames on the computer, none of Evan’s friends heard of those games and so those friends would tell their parents about the GarageGame games, parents would download a few and pay the nominal fee and the power of kid networking ran its course. The same thing happened to us with the PS2. First we heard about the newer StarWarsLego game, then ApeEscape3, then….and you can see where the story goes. Kids are great advertisers for games. |
| I don’t play many games aside from online chess (chess.com or itsyourturn.com) and the rare “Let me take a turn at that” at StarWarsLego or Cars. I am fearful, though, of GuitarHero as much as I was fearful of Asteroids when it came to the local Longs Drug store in Santa Rosa, CA in the early 80s. So, I’ll try and stick with chess and twittering and the occasional blog post. I enjoy those things and it think the boys enjoy the PS2. |
| Off to celebrate today with a good cup of coffee, eat some Girl Scout cookies and read a Linux magazine. |
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[...] He wanted one of his friends to come over Friday night which means lots of PS2 time (and not the usual 30 min. timer limit). So, before dinner, I tell him (whiles he sits on my lap and he’s being all silly) that I [...]