So my brother-in-law who is, what, 16 now? Well, I don’t think there is a single day that he would miss playing his video games. Just finished his first year in high school and the report card shows a B average (the only A is in Physical Education). Pathetic. When I was 16 and with limited English language I was able to pull off a 3.8 GPA. Now with the increased toughness in getting into good colleges, I just don’t think a 3.0 will cut it. But whether or now he will go to college is really up to him. There are many successful people who didn’t go to college, but that’s another story.

Anyway, even as a brother-in-law it pisses me off to see him on his computer all day long. My logic - hey, it’s okay if you want to play video games all day long, but at least get decent grades, yeah? Get your priority straight, bro. Anyway, I’ve thought of ways to stop him from playing video games, but it’s kind of messed up that I pull the plug to his internet. The only other way would be to get rid of his PC altogether but I don’t want him to use the “lack of computer power” as an excuse to under-perform in school. There is got to be a way to limit the ports to the internet access while making web surfing and emails available. I just got to find out what games he plays all the time, and figure out what ports those games are using. Perhaps I’ll just go into the router and disable all ports but 80 (for the web).

Anybody else got this problem with kids playing the games too much? I’ll totally slap him around if he were my brother, but unfortunately he’s my wife’s brother and there is limited physical discipline I can enforce upon him

Tags: Steven Chang Diary