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Month: August 2016

Getting Started Playing D&D 5E using Fantasy Grounds Virtual Tabletop Program

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Fantasy Grounds is a virtual tabletop program designed to make playing role playing games online.  In many ways, it replicates the experience of playing in person with a table in the middle of the group, and in many ways it is quite different.  It is not an RPG game itself.  It does not have an Artificial Intelligence and it requires a someone to be running the game for other players.  This person is commonly called the Game Master (or Dungeon Master for D&D) and that person will be the “host” for the game.  The program uses a client/server approach with the GM running the server and the players connecting to the server as a client.

You do not need a VTT to play D&D online.  There are a lot of quite powerful conferencing software programs that allow for video, audio and sharing of screens.  Any of these could be used (GoToMeeting is a good example).  A lot of companies have spent a lot of money developing conferencing software to make remote business meetings better and if that is all you are looking for, the ability to share your screen (probably for maps) and to have multi-person audio is all you need.  A VTT like Fantasy Grounds does this better for specialized functions like dice rolling and moving tokens on the map, but I have not seen any VTT that is as good as the meeting software you can find from major corporations like Cisco for basic remote conferencing ability.  I prefer using Fantasy Grounds, but you do have other options.

Where to Get the Program

www.fantasygrounds.com or on Steam.  Search for Fantasy Grounds in Steam.

The Cost = Free (probably)

If all you want to do is play, Fantasy Grounds is often free.  There are two levels of license and two ways to pay, but the base software itself is free.  Let me breakdown the cost of the two licenses you can pay for, but the demo software is free and fully functional for playing.

Remember that Fantasy Grounds uses a client/server model and that the person running the game, the Dungeon Master in the case of 5e D&D, is the server.  It is the level of license that the server has that determines if the players have to pay for a license to play.  You also cannot buy content for the free, demo version of the game, you need to have bought a license.

The two different levels of licenses are Standard ($39 onetime fee or $3.99 a month subscription) and Ultimate ($149 one time or $9.99 a month subscription).  The only real difference between the two server licenses are that the Ultimate license can host unlimited free players while the Standard one cannot effectively host any free players (it can host one, but if anyone else joins the game, paid license or not, there can be no free players).

One not so secret feature of Fantasy Grounds is that it has been around a while.  People that like to DM tend to buy the Ultimate license.  So within the community of people that like to DM, many of them have bought the Ultimate license.  So a great many of the DM’s that are looking for players advertise that they have the Ultimate license and that means you do not need to spend anything for the program if all you want to do is play.

If you are only going to be a player, then the only license you will ever need is the Standard license.  If that is the case, I highly suggest that you ignore the subscription option and just pay the onetime fee of $39.  If you play for 10 months it is a wash and if you play for 4 months and then buy the Standard license you cannot apply any subscription fees that you have already paid to the onetime cost.

If you mainly want to be a DM, then I suggest that you consider the Ultimate license, but I will cover that in a different blog entry.  Just let me say that being a DM that can accept any player and who has all the rules available is expensive compared to just being a player.  This is no different at all compared to being a DM in a physical tabletop game as the DM usually buys the modules, provides the maps and monster miniatures, etc.

Sales/Discounts

The MSRP of the Standard license is $39.  Steam routinely sells a 4 pack of licenses for $120 (25% discount or $30 each).  There also is a 20% off sale for a single license every few months, at least for the Standard license.  Once or twice a year (Black Friday/Cyber Monday time, for example, usually when Steam does their big sales events) there might be a larger discount.  If you’re a little patient, you can probably get the Standard license for close to or just below $30.

What Operating Systems Does It Come On?

The program is a Windows program.  It works on Mac OS and Linux via WINE or other Windows emulation programs.  Fantasy Grounds recommends that you use the Steam version for the Mac as the installer seems to work better.  There usually are no real issues with installing the program in Windows, just about the only real choice you need to make is where the data will be stored.  Mac installations can be tricky, I had issues getting it to work on my daughter’s MacBook Air and if you don’t want to have to google and read through forum posts, I suggest trying Steam first.  Steam actually is convenient as it stores your license keys for you.  I have not tried installing it on Linux but others do run it there.

How Powerful a Computer / Internet Connection Do You Need?

The official specifications can be found on Fantasy Grounds and Steam.  This is the latest for Windows:

Windows Vista, Windows 7 or Windows 8 (and Windows 10 – my addition)
DirectX 9.0 or better
DirectX 9.0 compatible video adapter
RAM: 4 GB
Internet Connection

Those are not very demanding specifications and I have connected and been the DM on a Cellular 3G Hot Spot.  A faster Internet connection helps but there is not much data being sent back and forth unless larger graphics files are being loaded.

What About the Rules or DLC?  What do they Cost?

Even the demo/free version comes with the Systems Rules Document (SRD) that Wizards of the Coast provides for free.  It is almost all the rules including the rules on creating characters, their spells, weapons, equipment, almost everything except for the detailed class options.  This is free with every license level of Fantasy Grounds and includes drag and drop functionality onto your character sheet.

The DM also has the ability to share any DLC they have bought with players that are connected to his game (server model).  If you are not connected, you do not have access any more.  Most DM who run 5e games will own the Player’s Handbook (called D&D Complete Core Class Pack in Fantasy Grounds) and you can connect to their game and use it to create your character and whenever you need to level your character up.

You cannot buy DLC without at least a Standard license.  If you are just going to play D&D, the only DLC you will need is the Player’s Handbook.  Remember that the SRD, which is free, comes with all the standard rules and almost 100% of all the spells.  Fantasy Grounds not only sells the complete “core class pack” with all the character class details, it also sells the classes as a separate pack for each class.  So if you are playing in one campaign with your friends, you are unlikely to be playing multiple characters with multiple different classes, and that means you just need to buy the class pack for your character.

The cost for the entire “Complete Core Class Pack” is at the MSRP that WoTC has or $49.99.  That is not the price that Smiteworks (the company that owns Fantasy Grounds) sets, that is the official WoTC price that they have to follow.  One other VTT is now licensed for official 5e D&D materials and they are charging MSRP as well.  Even more often than the license there are 20% off sales on the Player’s Handbook.  So if you wait you can get it for $40.  Even less on the much rarer special sales days.

You can also just buy the class pack for your character class for between $3 and $6 depending on which class you want.  Unlike the SRD, the DLC contains all the class features from the Player’s Handbook, and, if appropriate, all of the spells.  There is one more piece of DLC that has all the races and all the background “fluff” automated and that is $9.  This DLC also includes the optional feats that you can use if the DM decides to add that to the game.

So, total cost for the software license and the complete Player’s Handbook is, if bought when not on sale, about $90.  Again, there is a good chance this will be completely free assuming the DM has an Ultimate license and has the DLC available for you.  This drops to $46 if you just buy one class pack.  Or $55 if you want the race details and background details to be automated.

Your cost for the DLC if you played with the physical book at MSRP?  About $50 if not on sale.  There is no difference in DLC cost!  Sure. Amazon.com has the books for less than MSRP but Fantasy Grounds offers it on sale as well on occasion.  You do not have the option of just buying one character class, so you actually save money there if you are just a player and only want one or two character classes.

More on the Rules and DLC

You do not just get the text of the rules.  Fantasy Grounds actually automates a lot of the rules.  For example, roiling to hit a monster and dealing damage can be completely automated by the game.  You get dice built into the game and this includes a 3D animation of the dice being rolled.  The rules automation is all free and included in the SRD and the different DLC increases the automation.  As a player, you get what the DM has purchased when you play and most who have been DMing for quite a while will have all the automation.  The program has a full effects builder and you can generally automate most powers, weapons, spells, features, traits, etc. that you have.

One Last Comment On the Cost of Fantasy Grounds

If you read reviews of Fantasy Grounds, especially when compared to other VTT (the main competition is Roll20, D20Pro and Map Tools), almost always the “high cost” of the software is the first major criticism.

As I have already explained, the software is FREE and you very often can play for FREE.  Unless you and your friends are all brand new to Fantasy Grounds (and I was when I started with my friends a year ago), you can probably find a game with a DM with the Ultimate License and play for free.

Let’s assume that you all are new to Fantasy Grounds and you all want to DM at some point.  My first advice is for the one being the DM to try for one month the subscribe to the ultimate license and everyone else use the demo client for free.  If you cancel before the month is up, you get the first month subscription free.  So your group can try to play with a DM using the Ultimate license, the full SRD and free modules that the community has made available (probably not as good as the commercial ones available but they are not bad) for free.  As in it costs you nothing.  Really, I mean FREE.

Then, after the free month you like it a lot and you buy it, and it is not on sale and you pay $40.  Please go to Steam and look at the top selling software.  The average price is between $40 and $60 with $60 being the typical “A list” price.  If you want to play multiplayer, everyone needs to own their own copy.  I can assure you, that if you really like D&D, you will log more hours for your $39 that you spent than pretty much any other software you own on Steam.

If you want to play D&D, then you need the rules.  So the DLC cost is not really fair to add on to the cost of Fantasy Grounds when discussing the cost to play.  Since the SRD is free and most of the rules and you can actually recreate everything else yourself if you had time without buying the rules DLC, if you have time and no money you can play for free except for the license cost.

There are some stones you can toss at Fantasy Grounds because of the age of the program (it is old but maintained and had the official 5e D&D DLC at least a year before anyone else did) and UI choices that were made, but the cost is not high, especially when there is a good argument that for a player it is often free.

What Else Do You Need?

In theory, you could play by typing into the chat window (and some handicapped players do exactly that) but almost everyone will want some form of voice option and something that can support all the players in your group at the same time.  I do not want to do a grand survey of all the available options, so here is my top three choices: Teamspeak, Skype and Google Hangouts.  You could even do a conference call by telephone if you wanted to.

There are other options to Teamspeak (Discord, mumble, ventrillo etc.) but there is a free Teamspeak server provided by the Fantasy Grounds community so if you are joining a game you found on the Fantasy Grounds forums there is a good chance you will be using Teamspeak.  There is a free client available at www.teamspeak.com.  There also are IOS and Android clients for phone charges.  As an aside, a non-commercial 32 user server is free and I run one on my Networked Attached Storage unit but the software is not that demanding.  You can even run it on a Raspberry Pi ( https://eltechs.com/run-teamspeak-3-server-on-raspberry-pi/ ).  There are plenty of guides out there on how to use Teamspeak.  You will need to know the server information where to connect.

I personally do not think that video is needed for the conferencing software, but both Skype and Google Hangouts offer it.  I traveled a fair amount and part of that time was in China and I and my group often play from hotel rooms.  Bandwidth can be at a premium and video eats a lot of it.  If your group uses these programs, then make sure you understand what you need to do to connect.

No matter what software you use, a headset and a decent microphone really help.

So I have Everything, How Do I Play?

The very first thing you will need, after the program is installed and running, is the information you will need to connect to the server (to the DM that is running the game).  Your DM will likely give you one of three things:

  1. An IP address which is a string of numbers like this 192.168.1.1
  2. A server alias which is normally a few words like “friend blue squad”
  3. A URL or internet address like this “fantasygrounds.com”

You click the Join Game button on the front page that comes up.

FGstarting Screen

That gives you a screen with two choices – user name and Host Address

FG server input

In the user name box, use whatever name you want associated with you in the game (generally not your character name but it can be).  In the Host Address Box you put the connection information that the DM gave you, one of the three options above.

Your program (a client) will now try and connect to the DM (running the server).  Assuming that you entered the correct connection information.  Try to remember what user name you used.  It all will be saved on the screen and if the same next time you can just click what you last used.  Your DM can fix it if you change user names, but your character is “owned” by your user name.

There are a lot of Youtube Videos and Wiki entries that shows you how to play and if your DM is experienced, they will help you learn the program.  Let me give a few top level tips here, but this is about getting started, not using the program.

The UI of the program is unusual and it does not look or act like a standard Windows (or Mac OS) program.  It takes a little getting used to, but playing is much easier than being the DM and there is not as much to learn.

The first thing you will find is that right clicking will bring up a circular or “radial” menu.  There will be a center “spoke” and symbols around it.  Hovering over the symbol should bring up a tool tip.  Clicking the symbol activates it.  Clicking the center spoke closes the menu.

To enter ability scores, you need to hover the “hand” pointer over the space and then type.  Follow this specific order:

  1. Enter your ability scores.
  2. Then drag your race into the race spot.
  3. Then drag your class to the class spot. You will level up later by dragging the class here again.

Please note that if you start adding and subtracting races or manually changing numbers, the program may not calculate all the bonuses correctly.

Look for what looks like little magnifying glasses.  Clicking them often opens up more fields for input.

Either find an image before you connect or do an image search once you make your character.  Dragging and dropping the image onto the portrait spot for it will create a token for your character.  There also are portraits included in the game or you can use outside images.

One the right is a series of buttons.  The two most common ones you will use as a player are the combat tracker (top of the button row) and the library (where you will find the rules, like the player’s handbook) available for you to read.

Generally, you can target two ways.  Holding control and clicking on the token or on the entity in the combat tracker will add or remove a target.  I find clicking the combat tracker to be more reliable.

There is no area of effect targeting.  There are “pointers” that can draw the area of effect on the map and then you individually target the appropriate entities.

You attack by the action tab in your character sheet.  Open it up, select the weapon and double click the “to hit” die.  The game should automatically determine if you hit or miss if you targeted before you rolled.  Click the damage die to do damage.

Most of the spells that can be are automated.  Target and either apply the effect or roll to hit or apply damage, whatever is needed.

The bottom left near the chat window has the buttons and space to apply modifiers before you roll.

Holding shift while applying (clicking for) damage makes it a critical.  Normally the game has already done this and it is not needed.

When you are done with your turn, there is a button to click in the combat tracker to move to the next player or NPC.

The DM can roll all initiatives or you can roll your own.  I find it faster for the DM to do it but many players do not like that.

Using hit die to heal is done by clicking the die on your character sheet.

Again, read the detailed wikis or spend a few hours watching the Youtube videos before you first play and your first session will be better.  This is especially good if your whole group is new to Fantasy Grounds.

Have Fun!

These are links to buy the physical (not Fantasy Grounds versions) D&D 5e rule books: Player’s Handbook (Dungeons & Dragons) Monster Manual (D&D Core Rulebook) Dungeon Master’s Guide (D&D Core Rulebook)

CFO Pay

One question I get pretty often from people starting in Finance as a career is how much does a CFO get paid, and how do you make sure you are getting enough.  In many ways, that is a very puzzling question to me.  In a US-listed public company (not a foreign private issuer), executive pay is public and normally can be found in the proxy statement that is filed annually.  So it is no secret what CFOs get paid, everything is laid out in their contract (material contract and a copy is filed with the SEC) plus broken down in some detail in the proxy statement.

These are my general rules on pay and they really apply to every position, not just CFO, but I will use CFO as my example.

No one will take care of your pay except for you and you will only get what you negotiate for.  Hoping that you’re doing a good job and that the pay will just be adjusted accordingly is a false hope.  You need to be your own advocate here.  Maybe your boss needs to carry it to the compensation committee.  Maybe the head of HR needs to go argue on your behalf with your boss.  Whatever the case, if you are not making sure that more pay is needed, chances are good that nothing special will happen.

The best and only clear time to negotiate is before you accept the job during the hiring process.  Once you are on board, it will become much harder.  You need to know what a fair price for the position is.  You need to know what you would accept to take the job.  You need to negotiate for that up front.  Some negotiation is not only expected, if you do not, it may hurt their perception of you as a good Finance leader as they may wonder what you will do as CFO.

Most companies are not interested in hiring a leader that is too mercenary and you run a risk of being too demanding and setting yourself up to fail from the very beginning.  This needs to balance with the point above about the best time to negotiate is when you are being hired.  It is my view that there is more to life than being paid cash and the opportunity to learn and to work with a good team is important.  I also do not get paid as much as some of my peers and their setting a higher bar up front never seemed to hurt them, so I might be wrong there.

There are a few immediate sources of what pay you should be expecting.  The first is the proxy statements of the hiring company and its peers.  Look at what the CFO you are replacing received.  Look at what peers or companies of similar size and complexity are getting paid.  That will set a baseline.  The second source is the recruiter that approached you (assuming that is how you heard of the opportunity).  You need to keep in mind that their client is the hiring company, but they also play a role in setting the right expectations with the company.  Don’t be afraid to be upfront with what you are making now, they deal with attracting talent as a living, they are used to that type of discussion.  If what you want is too much, they will tell you.  If you are asking for too little, then you did not do your homework and maybe lack some confidence.

Once you are set on the base salary, you need to make sure the bonus is appropriate.  The same two sources you used for salary are good for this as well.  You should not only focus on the base bonus, you need to understand when it will be paid and in what circumstances it will be larger than base.  My normal expectation is that by working hard, 80% of base bonus should be very achievable.  As I have worked in several turnarounds, there have been years when no bonus was paid.  Again, it might be somewhat of a failing in my views as I have always accepted the same targets as the other team members when I have started.  Quite often the company is having a bad year and that is why they are changing CFOs and that approach means zero bonus for me as that is what the existing team is getting.  It is not uncommon to negotiate for a set bonus for the first year.  In many cases you would earn a good one if you stayed where you are and part of recruitment is overcoming such obstacles, so the hiring company often will make you whole.

The final “pay” part is the equity you will receive.  This is a question of how much the initial amount is, what can you expect on an annual basis and will you receive stock options or restricted share units.  You certainly should try to be made whole for whatever you would give up to join the new company.  You probably cannot replace the vesting, but the value should be on the table for negotiation.  Annual grants are important.  Over time, your base pay and your bonus will help to let you pay your mortgage, pay for your kids to go to school and save for retirement, but it is unlikely to change your life.  Stock compensation can change your life.

The normal choice between RSU and Options is certainty versus upside.  You really cannot control the overall stock market and there always is a risk that you do well but the stock cannot perform well because of general market conditions.  In that case, RSU are much better as payment, even if smaller, is at least going to happen.  Sometimes you are not doing all that well but the market takes off and your stock moves with it.  In that case, Options end up much better.

In the long run, as a responsible CFO you should tend to prefer RSU as dilution is smaller and expenses are more certain and predictable.  For pay, if the company is stable and growing then RSU will give you certain return.  If you are doing a turnaround and you want the biggest pay you can get, then Options have the most possibility.

One smaller item to consider is retirement savings.  I am sure that you will save the most you can into the 401(k), so any matching is a plus.  You also need to understand if the plan is top heavy and what happens if executives cannot save via the plan.

The pay factors to consider do not end with salary, bonus and equity.  Pay attention to the complete package and the contract they are offering you.  Vacation time is important.  You do not want to have a seniority-based system where you start with one or two weeks like any other new employee and only increase the longer you are there.  Clauses like this tend to be boilerplate and the same for all new hires and you need to pay attention to it.

You also need to pay attention to the severance clauses.  In the USA, at will contracts are typical.  So you need some protection if you are let go without cause.  It takes a while to find a senior management job and you should negotiate a buffer.  Look at what the comparable are as in all other pay items, but 6 months is about as little as I would accept and one year is not unusual.  Change of control clauses are usually somewhat linked to severance clauses.  Make sure you understand what the standard equity programs give all participants if there is a change of control.  If your equity does not vest on change of control, then try to at least have it vest if you are let go as a result of a change of control.  If your company is being bought they probably do not need another CFO and you are likely to be let go.  So make sure you are protected here.

Make sure there is a clear “Good Reason” clause in your contract that would be triggered and your severance pay become due for several usual circumstances.  For example, a forced move over 50 miles because your place of employment is changing, a drop it title or responsibility or a drop in pay, all of these are typical “good reason” clauses and you should make sure that you are protected.

Your contract will probably contain many clauses restricting your ability to compete if you leave, stopping you from hiring co-workers, making anything invented while you are there company property and defining what is considered to be confidential information.  Many of these are boilerplate and in most employment contracts for the new employees of the company.  Make sure that the requests are reasonable.

Finally, look at miscellaneous items like travel policies, restrictions on you being a Board member at another company and other anti- “moonlighting” clauses.

You would be well served to have a lawyer, especially a lawyer experienced working with employment law and employment contracts review your contract before you sign.  Make sure you understand what you are being asked to sign and that it is worded properly so that you are protected.

That really is all the top level advice I have on CFO pay.  Knowing what the market price and standard terms and conditions are is the most important.  The rest will come down to your ability and just how attractive you really are to the company trying to hire you.

My Technology Life – An Update

I recently built myself a new computer after using the last one for almost 5 years.  My old computer was able to run all the programs I had without any real issues, but it was slowly getting more unstable over time, and the update to Windows 10 had been rough.

The Computer

This time I wanted to build a computer that could run the latest virtual reality headsets and I wanted to have something that again would last me quite a while.  I typically buy the second fastest consumer CPU that is available as the fastest is normally at a high premium in cost but with little extra speed, but the Intel 6700K had finally come down to suggested retail price.  I wanted the modern chipset that went with it so something on the Z170 chipset was what I looked for in a motherboard.  My timing was not that great for a video card in that both NVIDIA and AMD were about to release their latest generation, so I actually waited over a month after buying the rest of my components before fully setting the computer up.  The motherboard did have built in graphics and the CPU did as well, so I was able to test everything except for the new card.

I will make two observations.  The first is that I have always felt it important to be agnostic about brands when making choices on most of the components.  Years ago there was a great deal of variety in motherboards and how features were implemented on them.  Today, the two main CPU makers (Intel and AMD) release a new chipset with each new CPU generation and that chipset is very full featured.  I have almost always used Intel CPUs because for many years, they have been the best performing.  AMD often wins on the cost to performance basis, but it has been quite a while since they have had a chip that can compete for pure performance.  I did build an AMD-based computer a few computers ago because that generation they did have the best CPU.

CPUs are fairly quiet, but there often are techie “holy wars’ over video cards.  I admit to have fought a little in them back when 3DFX and their voodoo chips revolutionized 3D, but I got over it.  Now I just buy the card that I think does the best for me.  The two main graphics processor unit (GPU) providers are NVIDIA and AMD (they bought ATI years ago).  My last generation computer has an AMD video card (a 370) and that was based on AMD having better multi-monitor technology at the time as I like running 3 monitors.  There are edge cases where AMD has had better chips, but for the most part, NVIDIA has had the highest performing chips for a while.

Unlike CPUs, the price jump to the most powerful GPU to the second best is still enormous and unless you really are a power gamer or power user, there is little need to get the best GPU.  For the computer I just built, I ended up with an NVIDIA 1070 based video card (the board maker was MSI).  I had considered the AMD RX 480 as it was a lot less expensive, but the demand was so high that cards were hard to find and the custom cards had not come out yet.  So I went with the 1070.

I could write pages and pages on the latest and greatest differences between the board makers and the different CPU and GPU you could choose, but this blog entry will exist for a long time and tech sites are always much more current (I go to anandtech.com but ownership changes have made it less useful in the last year).  So I will give some more general observations.

The premium priced components in the consumer space are all aimed at gamers.  This tends to result in multi-color LED lights and a black (and usually red highlights) color scheme.  There actually is very little value add from what I can tell from my research for the extra price you pay.  There certainly is much less bang for the buck.  The video card I bought is branded as an MSI “gaming” card and it looks nice but does not really offer any performance improvements over non-gaming cards.

Motherboards are similar.  The Z170 chipset has plenty of solid boards that cost around $150 (can be found for less during sales).  You can spend $250 to $300 and just get a few extra bells and whistles that you may never use.

One final comment, if you build the computer yourself, be prepared to troubleshoot yourself and to have to refresh your knowledge.  I had a faulty power supply and it took me quite a while to track the problem down.  Google and technology forums are your friends here.

This is the system I ended up putting together:

Intel Skylake Core i7-6700K
– the fastest CPU currently available. Depending on luck, can be overclocked a fair amount
Cooler Master Hyper 212 EVO – CPU Cooler with 120 mm PWM Fan
– One of the bestselling coolers. Quite tall, was interesting to install
ASUS Z710 – AR
– all of the modern features of the chipset and none of the “gamer” bells and whistles that jack up the price. PCI-e sharing (which is common for the chipset) so might be a concern for dual GPU use but I plan on only using one GPU.
GPU – MSI Gamer NVIDIA GTX 1070.  As I mentioned, both the main GPU companies just released new cards and it is hard to find cards priced at regular retail prices.

G.SKILL TridentZ Series 16GB (2 x 8GB) 288-Pin DDR4 SDRAM DDR4 3733 (PC4 29800)
– this is actually somewhat of a waste. Super-fast RAM that I probably would not need and I could of gone down a few notches in speed and double the amount for the same price as I will not heavily overclock
CM Storm Scout 2 Advanced – Gaming Mid Tower Computer Case with Carrying Handle and Windowed Side Panel – Black
– This is an updated version of the case I have been using the past 5 years. Roomy and has a handle on top which comes in handy more often than not. Plenty of room for fans, and a good front panel for USB
Antec 750 Gamer power supply.  I originally had a corsair power supply but it was faulty.
– Should be way more power than I need, especially if I do not have 2 x GPU
SAMSUNG 950 PRO M.2 256GB PCI-Express 3.0 x4 NVMe Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
– Very fast SSD (motherboard supported) that will be my boot drive and will have some applications on it
Mushkin Enhanced Reactor 2.5″ 256GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
– Secondary SSD for often accessed files and other applications
Seagate 3TB Desktop HDD SATA 6Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive
– Should be plenty of room, especially since I have a 16TB NAS
LG Black 16X BD-R 2X BD-RE 16X DVD+R 5X DVD-RAM 12X BD-ROM 4MB Cache SATA Blu-ray Burner
– I debated if I really needed an optical drive and finally decided to get one as I can see myself watching movies on the computer and I have a lot of Blueray disks (PS4 is my main player)
Razer BlackWidow Ultimate Stealth 2016 – Backlit Quiet Mechanical Gaming Keyboard with 10 Key Rollover
– Decided to try a mechanical keyboard. These have Razer designed mechanisms, not sure if as good as Cherry-MX switches. Quieter version.
Logitech G600MMO Gaming Mouse – Black
– Will move over from my existing computer. I do not use all the buttons and may look at another mouse

VR Headset

The latest technology that is just starting to go mainstream is Virtual Reality.  There are two main contenders for the headset market right now – the Oculus Rift (which is backed by Facebook) and the HTC Vive which has teamed up with Steam (owned by a company called Valve and the main marketplace to buy PC games online).

If I had to sum up the main differences between the two headsets, I would say that the HTC Vive comes with two controllers and can be used standing and moving (called room-scale) and sitting down while the Oculus Rift is mainly meant to be used sitting down and does not as of now come with VR controllers.  The Vive has a lot more content available for it now, but many programs are made for both headsets and there are not many non-game programs available.

I got to try out the Vive at uploadvr.com ‘ s offices in San Francisco when I was there for a meeting with a McGill University representative who wanted me to help in their entrepreneur program.  I had read that the room-scale made a big difference and when I tried it out I agreed.

The experience in both headsets is pretty good and you do really get a sense of immersion far beyond what looking at a screen will give you.  The Oculus Rift is about $600 and the HTC Vive is about $800, but the Vive comes with two controllers and two sensor boxes that enable the room scale VR.

I picked the HTC Vive as it has more software available today and because the built in ability to move around instead of just sitting down sold me on the system.  The actual graphics capability is about the same between the two controllers and both are just emerging, so the “best” choice may change rapidly.

I have only used the headset for a few days., so I will hold off on a detailed review, but I can tell you that the base experience lives up to the hype.

I am waiting to see what non-game uses there are for the headsets.  There is a fair bit of work being done to develop approaches and applications for the virtual world the headsets put you into that make it useful for non-games, but there are not that many real life examples yet.  I will be attending a meeting on that topic in a few weeks and will update and right a new blog after I have more information.

Getting the headset to work was somewhat of a struggle and the programs are all new and very much “early access”, so I hesitate to recommend it for everyone, but it has been quite fun so far.  One of my friends brought his young son over (son is around 10 years old) and the son was fascinated with the headset and wore it for hours.

3D Printing

As I mentioned in an earlier blog, 3D Printers are technology that is still not quite ready for mainstream use.  They still take a lot of fiddling with to get to work well and consistently and you need to be comfortable with at least some light mechanical work.  I recently bought another 3D printer, the Wanhao Duplicator 6.  It is over twice the price of the Wanhao Duplicator i3 I started with (and that is an excellent starter machine), but it is much more capable as well.  I will do an update just on the new printer and what I have learned since I bought my first one.  This update will include using a raspberry pi mini-computer to remotely control and monitor the printer.

The raspberry pi mini-computer part of my coming update will be extensive as well.  Quite remarkable what you get for around $50.

Why Bother?

This is a blog on being a CFO and I usually have Tuesdays are purer “CFO” topics and Thursdays are where my occasional other blogs show up.  So you may be wondering why I am writing on building a PC or VR headsets or 3D printers.

My reasons are quite simple – career growth and personal growth.  I live in the Silicon Valley area and there is a lot of interest in the technology around computers, VR and 3D Printers.  More and more, companies are looking for CFOs that are more than just the accounting and numbers person.  IF I don’t expand my mind and learn by doing in areas like this, then how can I be credible when I claim to be a good fit for a technology company CFO role?

I get personal satisfaction on learning new things, but with the competition out there today, I really think that you need to keep actively learning.  If you stop and rest on your laurels, you will be passed by.  I often have had staff ask me how I got to know our company’s products, and it is the same drive that makes me want to understand VR Headsets that made me dig into how electricity comes from a solar panel.

So try not to dismiss other people trying to learn and very importantly, encourage your staff to do so.

 

 

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