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| Monday, June 27th, 2005 | | 9:50 am |
What do you follow up 'One Winged Angel' with?
What a wonderful weekend. Friday was Kassi and my third wedding anniversary. I spent the afternoon at the Digital Game Expo (more information in my technical journal) then headed home around 6, picking up some gifts along the way. We exchanged gifts shortly after I got home. Kassi got me some DVDs and CDs that I wanted for awhile. I got her a DVD (Start the Revolution without me), a CD set (the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy radio play, tertiary phase), and an official reproduction Audrey Hepburn tiara. Unfortunately the gitz at Tiara town sent me the wrong tiara which I didn't notice until Kassi pointed it out to me. Now I need to get them to exchange it back for the one I ordered, but hey, it's the thought that counts, right? Our big anniversary plans however were to go see the Dear Friends concert in Atlanta on Saturday. We decided not to do the whole drive Saturday morning, so we left Friday evening to stay at my parents house in Charlotte overnight. Saturday morning we went out to brunch with my brother, who's birthday was the following day, at Wolfgang Pucks. While eating he told us all about being the the Marines boot camp. He also relayed the fact that his unit was definitely going to be deployed to Iraq sometime in late August. They are going to be escorting transports around Faluja. God be with them. We got out of Charlotte around 1 and headed south. We arrived in Atlanta at 5:30, which was precisely when we needed to be there for the concert by later than we wanted to arrive. Everything turned out to be fine though because we easily found the concert hall well before the show. Going in we noticed the audience was a crazy mix of what looked to be your typical Atlanta symphony season ticket holders, dressed in their finest regalia for a night at the symphony, and your hard core gamer Final Fantasy fans, dressed in t-shirts from Hot Topic and bright neon hair dye. The concert was simply amazing. I don't know if I can describe it much better than that. It was everything we wanted, and a little bit more due to a really impressive encore. I haven't been to many concerts in my life, but this was clearly one of the best. The show ended a little after 8 and we headed a few blocks south to our hotel, a Residence Inn. Dropping off our bags we took a walk to find some dinner. Despite it being not very late and the abundance of night life in Atlanta, most of the restaurants were closed. We ended up at a swank Italian place (swank like they wouldn't let me wear my hat in the restaurant swank) but the food was good, so it was okay. Afterward feeling full we headed back to the hotel (stopping only for a half hour at McDonalds to pick up a jug of milk for tea), watched the second half of An Affair to Remember on AMC (dialog bad!) and went to sleep. Sunday we did the whole drive back in one go. We were driving out of Atlanta by 12:30 and only stopped twice to eat, but we didn't get home until almost 10 PM. The driving wasn't so bad though because we listened to 'Life, the Universe, and Everything' on audio book most of the time. Finally, Jerry was kind enough to drop off our puppy before I headed off to bed. Fantabulous. Current Mood:  pleasedCurrent Music: Final Fantasy main theme (imh) | | Thursday, June 2nd, 2005 | | 2:19 pm |
Microsoft controls XML?
I don't normally gripe about tech news, but I'm a bit leary about something I read today. Microsoft is converting it's proprietary Office file formats over to XML. Which is really nice for developers who want to generate Office documents from custom applications (something I have been asked to do). So is Microsoft just turning over Office document creation to just anyone? Well it may or may not be related, but I notice a separate story that Microsoft has patented the serialization of XML. Patent details here. So wouldn't that mean they could still control people accessing their Office documents by asserting their patent rights whenever someone serializes an Office document? I don't know. But I do think this is a silly patent. It seems obvious to me, and I think that being non-intuitive is a prerequisite for getting a patent on something. Then again I haven't read the entire patent application. Current Mood:  curious | | Wednesday, June 1st, 2005 | | 10:14 pm |
| | 5:54 pm |
Back from a bit of a vacation. Kassi and I went to Topsail beach for the extended weekend. My parents rented a beach front house, and honestly I had a really good time. The only thing that spoiled was a bit of drama between my brother and his ex, but mostly things were really good. We chilled out, took walks on the beach, watched movies, read books. I even played a few games with my family, something I can't recall us doing a lot of in my formative later teen years. Kassi and I also got to spend some time flying our kites. She has this really pretty boat kite she got for her birthday awhile ago, and this was the first time she got to try it out. I'll post a picture as soon as my dad sends them to me. We left Saturday afternoon and came back Monday evening, and traffic was surprisingly light both ways. Kassi had borrowed the audio book edition of the Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. This was my first time through the book version, and I must say I was rather pleased. I really need to read / hear the whole series though. Something for our next road trip, I suppose. Tonight I'm going to another IGDA meeting. They'll be discussing the new Unreal 3 engine. Sounds interesting. I really wish I could figure out what I want to work on next. I start browsing around on the Internet and just start brainstorming all the projects I could work on, but I always hesitate at starting something because I hate not finishing a project I've started. And so I wait for the right moment. What will it be? In other game development (and player) related news, I found this manifesto to be a rather interesting. And I agree with most of the points too. Something to keep in mind. Ah yes, and more exciting news, George R.R. Martin is finally releasing some of his draft for A Feast for Crows. And the series grows, again. But I can't say i'm sorry to hear that. Kassi and I are headed to Charlotte next weekend to ConCarolinas. It's a two part venture. One, we hopefully will get to meet David Franklin of Farscape fame. Two, a RHPS cast, Farely Flavors 5, will be performing Saturday night, and I just love seeing other casts at work. It always either gives me ideas, or makes me feel better about our own production. Either way it's sure to be fun. Off to dinner. Current Mood: happy | | Thursday, May 26th, 2005 | | 4:38 pm |
| | Thursday, May 19th, 2005 | | 5:57 pm |
What a weird day
Starting a work day at 11 makes me feel just weird all over. But after going to the midnight screening of Star Wars last night, there was no was I was going to get in by 9. Ah well. It's almost time to go and I feel like I just got here. Maybe I should take more half days... And in relation to Star Wars, I'll just say that I liked it. A lot. It was sad... but good. And that's all I'll say for now. In other news, I finally found the time to clean the master bathroom yesterday. It might not seem like a lot, but it was the only thing that's been really bothering me for weeks now (other than the Kitchen, which I finished last weekend) and I couldn't clean until I felt better (ala this week). Now it is done and life moves on. Hopefully I can actually do something fun tonight. I'm leaning heavily toward working on Space Junk, because I really want to finish something for a change. Funny how a few years ago when I started the project it seemed really, I donno, large. But now after several years of "real" work my little hobby project seems like a picnic. I think it's the saddest thing in the world that one of my friends believes he would never want to do something he enjoys as a job, because as he says 'it would become work.' My view on life is quite the opposite. I would love to do something I enjoy as a job, because it would turn work into fun. Nothing is one dimensional. Current Mood: peacefulCurrent Music: Gravity of Love - Enigma | | Tuesday, May 17th, 2005 | | 3:15 pm |
There is no 'i' in machete
Feeling 110% better this week thanks to the miracle of prednisone. Huzzah. I'm actually getting up on time (earlier in fact) and I've had energy to accomplish few things that have been put off for weeks. Like cleaning the kitchen. Sorely needed, and finally done. Next to tackle the master bathroom. Hopefully I can do that tonight and knock it off my list. With my new found energy I've been in the mood to finish off projects I've had sitting around for awhile. Space Junk and Fenrir spring to mind. Also I sorely want to help Kassi with her attempts to get Midnight Child published, though I'm not sure how much help I'll be. At least I'm good at getting things organized. Kassi's been mysteriously down lately, only to be raised by her tea of doom. We bought ingredients to try the chemistry at home, maybe it will work, maybe not. Here's hoping she can find her happy thoughts again. Ugh, the side of our house looks like a small jungle. Frell lawn maintenance, but I got this vision of our meter reader using a machete to find the side of our house, so I think I might do something about the weeds in the front lawn. Jerry might lown me some natural weed poisons. Huzzah to little work. In other news, I realized that I'm an RSS nut. I discovered today the joys of Firefox live bookmarks, so I think I may switch over to that rather than ever increasing the number of Live Journal syndications I subscribe to. And I also discovered http://del.icio.us for all my link saving needs. I've been keeping a manual list of the hundreds of links I like to keep archived for future reference, and I'm hoping throwing them online might make updating the list a bit easier. I just wish del.icio.us had a way of ranking your links on call back. I'm also wondering if I can't do a bit of client side scripting to make my del.icio.us RSS link feed into a local favorites list organized by tags. Hmmm. </geek> Having more energy has also made work a heck of a lot easier to bear. Or maybe it's just that i'm on the end of a major project that's going really well. In either case I find myself actually looking forward to returning to work at times, so that can't be all bad. Last weekend was a blast. Coupled with my new found energy, Rocky's reunion night was fantastic. Pika, Susan, Jon-Michael, Penguin return. Kassi produces the first of her many fabulous signs of doom. And I actually had an excess of crew (Crissy and Lillian both showed up, though Lil didn't work). Huzzah for a great show. Afterward we went out to eat with Susan. Denny's was a mistake, probably should go to Sheets next time. Saturday went to game fest at Mike & Sherri's. Fabulous time. Played Robo-Rally, Catan, Cosmic Encounters, and Tigris & Euphrates. It had been a long time since I really games for a whole afternoon. Kassi found things to do watching television in with the non-gamers, so that was good for her. I think we stayed a bit too late for her though. Sunday I was knocked up on benedryl, due to an overdose of cat the previous day. I slept most of the day away, only managing to accomplish some grocery shopping and watching the first few episodes of Firefly which Sherri graciously allowed us to borrow. It's growing on me. What else? Who knows, I'm running out of stream of conscious thought here. I want to clean house and invite people over like we used to. Maybe a party or just a movie-watching evening. Must talk to Kassi about that... Love 2 All. Current Mood: content | | Monday, May 2nd, 2005 | | 2:34 pm |
Blargh.
Ugh what a horrible weekend. I had plans to do minimal stuff around the house, but I ended up being too sick to do even that. I ended up just vegging on the couch the whole weekend watching movies with Kassi. Collectively we watched: "Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy, Joe versus the Volcano, The Graduate, Ed Wood". I'm feeling a bit better today, but it'll still be a few days till I can do stuff normally again. I hate being sick. Oh yeah, and this reminded me of ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) anacoluthon and listener for some reason. Current Mood:  sore | | Friday, April 29th, 2005 | | 2:42 pm |
It's just a fantastic modern fantasy paranorma murder mystery.
I spend so much time reading LJ yet I so rarely think to click 'update'. So I finally finished reading my favorite book. And I do mean finally, because I started reading it over two years ago. That's when Kassi lent me her then unfinished manuscript of Midnight Child, her then second novel. For various reasons the novel got sidetracked and shelved for some time. Last week I opened up my bag at work to discover Kassi had slipped in a folder containing the finished manuscript. I've been reading it ever since. Once again I got sucked in and just couldn't put it down toward the end. I love the way she ended it, it was even better than I had hoped. Now I want to help her get it published. Anywho, anyone interested should bug tardis60 to read her latest novel. It's great! In other news I've had an extremely unproductive week (other than finishing MC). I hope to tackle house cleaning this weekend (or at least the kitchen). I've been in a mood to work on finishing projects rather than starting new ones, so I've been seriously considering going back to work on Space Junk. Better than starting another 30 hour painting project again I suppose. Current Mood: pleased | | Tuesday, April 12th, 2005 | | 11:47 am |
Just a random stream of conscious entry.
Some days one just has trouble focusing. Today I bummed around online a bit longer than I intended to (though I did find some interesting new feeds). Fortunately I've been making good progress on the project I get paid to work on, so I can afford a bit of time off. In other news I've been obsessed with painting lately. As Kyle will be up in two weeks, I'd like to have some new models finished to show him. Hopefully photos will be forthcoming. Life has been weird lately. Getting through major healthcare *shit* has made me feel, I donno, like i'm in the middle of a phase and I have no idea when it's going to end. And if the medication bothers me now, what happens when I actually start something real? (How's that for stream of conscious?) I feel like I haven't seen my friends in awhile again, but that's not new. Probably due to missing Rocky last week due to an upset stomach. Stupid medicine. I need to do something social sometime soon. Current Mood: hungryCurrent Music: Elephant Love Medley - MR | | Thursday, March 10th, 2005 | | 1:40 pm |
| | Sunday, February 13th, 2005 | | 4:58 pm |
So very sick. Had to get a test done Friday and in addition to recovering from that, I caught Pnemonia. I can't remember the last time I was this sick. I can barely get out of bed, and I have to force myself to eat so I can take my medicine. Ughh | | Tuesday, February 8th, 2005 | | 6:39 pm |
| | Wednesday, February 2nd, 2005 | | 1:40 pm |
I saw one of those "Eat Mor Chickin" posters this afternoon, so I went and bought some McNuggets. Current Mood: amused | | Monday, January 31st, 2005 | | 9:26 am |
It's been awhile. I've been meaning to update for awhile now but eh, you know... life. We got our gas fireplace finally hooked up last Friday. Not a day too soon either. We've discovered our heat pump only works so-so when the temperature is freezing outside, but with the fireplace on we can keep the temperature in our living room to a reasonable level. I also changed all our ceiling fans to their winter setting, and that seemed to help too. Still I could use a couple more 70 degree winter days again. The cold and ice made us decide not to go out this weekend, which included missing Susan's party. So sad, but at least we got to say our goodbye's at the show on Friday. I'm going to miss her a lot, and not just because she was a excellent crew member at Rocky. Ah well. I've got a possible lead on a game development related job which I'm pursuing right now. It's way to early to say anything definite, and I think that's making me a little nervous right now (the whole not knowing the future sort of thing). Nolan's been an excellent help so far (Three cheers! Huzzah!). I'll update again when I know more. I'm extremely proud of Kassi for deciding to submit her nanowrimo novel to lulu publishing. They had a deal awhile ago where people who participated in nanowrimo and finished could submit their novels to lulu and get a free copy published. She doesn't really intend to use lulu as her final publishing option for the novel, but I think it's a good start. Plus her novel looks really cool as a trade paperback. I'll edit this entry later when I get home to include a picture of her cover art (which I arranged ;-). If she gives permission I'll also link to how you too can purchase your own copy of her book, but thus far she's not sure she wants to make it available in that fashion. In other news Kassi's been somewhat sad of late. It's sort of a combination of the cold weather, her knees being extremely painful, and other emotional stuff that we're dealing with. I feel so bad for her but I'm running low on ideas of what could cheer her up. If anybody has any thoughts please pass them along. We're probably going to see Arsenic and Old Lace next Saturday evening. Michael Payne introduced me to the movie and Kassi and I love it, so the play should be loads of fun. I believe Michael is going to go with us. If anyone else is interested please let me know. Current Mood:  tired | | Monday, December 20th, 2004 | | 11:23 pm |
We're back...
The short of it, we're back from a fabulous trip to Disney World. A week there is never enough. We stayed at Pop Century resort, where they have 80's licious atari, game boy, and my little ponies in the lobby and a 2 story big wheel outside our room. We caught the major parks twice (animal kingdom once) and lots of downtown disney, as per usual. We saw the Incredibles and Series of Unfortunate Events at the AMC in downtown disney, both were wonderful (although LS's aSoUE had to grow on me at first). If anyone would really like to more about our trip just ask. What I call my Charlotte friends arrived today, minus one. I have a group of five friends who were my cliche in high school and we try to get together at least twice a year to play games and such (mostly D&D). None of them still live in Charlotte either, by the by. At the moment they're trying to smash their way through a temple to recuse my character, who is trapped under a glass decanter by the god of death. No, really. I leave you with the following puzzle, which I stole out of Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events, The Puzzling Puzzles. It's like a puzzle book, only more unfortunate.  | | Saturday, December 11th, 2004 | | 1:13 pm |
Last entry for awhile
Mmm so the show last night was awesome. Excellent costumes on many people's fronts (and backs). Kassi dressed in wrapping paper and ribbons. Photos to come. We're leaving for Disney World now. To return on the 19th. Cell calls are welcome. See ya later! Current Mood: excitedCurrent Music: A Patrick Swayze Christmas | | Wednesday, December 8th, 2004 | | 4:16 pm |
I've really got to stop doing that
So as it turns out, I'm a LiveJournal addict. I check my friends list waaay too often. And lately, I've found myself actually reading community comments when there's nothing new in my friends list. And sometimes, sometimes I actually click on strangers journals and start reading them. *shudders* I need a more interesting job. Or maybe it's just that I only have to work about eleven more hours this week and them I'm off until the 28th? I'm not entirely sure my brain is still here (I'm not entirely sure my brain is still stable). And you have no idea how much trouble I’m having typing today, sheesh. It's like I'm trying to type three different sentences at once and they're all coming out at the same time. Aye de mi, I keep having to type the same thing over and over again. This entry, apparently, is going to be stream of conscious. We leave for Disney World on Saturday. Needless to say I am excited. Not only am I going to spend a week in the happiest place on Earth, but it will also be my first real vacation this year. See previous entries about mooooving. I'm a little disappointed that we still haven't be able to work it out to have people go with us again this year. Probably a little bit of the miff after last year's trial. I just think it would be so cool to take a vacation with friends again, which I haven't done in a long time. Some year I suppose it will work out. It's not like we're going to stop going to Disney World. We're going to stay at a resort this year, instead of camping as we usually do. We discovered the value resorts are only about $5 more a night in the off season, and we would gladly pay that for an attached bathroom and temperature control. Never mind the not having to set up the tent at 3AM when we usually arrive. So next week will be great, yeah. I find it best not to plan ahead, vacations are best without plans. Kyle might be moving up to Raleigh in the near future. I'll believe it when I see it, but he says it's gonna happen and I have this weird thing about trusting people most of the time. That would be just incredible. Okay, a little back story: We've been best friends since the sixth grade. We did everything together growing up. In the ninth grade I changed schools, and in the tenth grade his family moved to SC. So it's been a long distance relationship since then, but we've kept a really strong friendship. We tried to go to college together but his parents didn't want to pay out of state tuition for him to come up here. Any who, if he did come, much gaming would be had. And there would be much rejoicing. Just a note, my spelling is atrocious. Even of the word atrocious. It's a good thing I run all my entries through spell check or you wouldn't be able to read them at all. Not that you read them in the first place. Or maybe I’m just really boring. I donno. I find myself terribly interesting. I'm one of those people who are just never ever bored given their own time and initiative. For example this evening Kassi will be hanging out with Heather, so I could do pretty much anything I want after I get off work. I'll probably go straight home since I'm not in the mood to spend money on stuff or food and we have lots of perishables to get rid of. But once there, what do I do? I love spending free time on something creative.. do I work on another Dawn of War mission? Go back and work on my Space Junk computer game I want to finish? Paint some more miniatures for upcoming Warhammer 40,000 battles? Or something less cognitive, I could continue to read Kassi's nanowrimo (which is better than she lead me to believe it would be) or watch a movie or play a video game. Anything. The world is my oyster, but I don't like oysters so that's a really bad metaphor. Also is true with the lemonade one. I think what I really want to do most is spend time with friends more often then I do now. Tad is coming over tomorrow to play 40k with me for the first time in awhile. Huzzah. Maybe I can get more people to come over and play games. That is what the game room is for after all. I've been using LJ for... well a long time (too lazy to look up usage stats) and I've never downloaded a client. The web interface is just fine with me. Do you all use clients (all two of you that might skim this entry?) I wish I owned a big ladder. Then I could cover our house in Christmas lights. As it is I can't hang any from the eves because they're just too damn high. And I don't own a vehicle large enough to go get a ladder with (even if I wanted to spend the money). Pooh. I'll probably just wrap some around the porch after the Christmas show this Friday. Speaking of Christmas, I wanna do a Christmas movie day and have people over to watch Christmas movies sometime near Christmas. Maybe Christmas eve or something like that I don't know yet But there's so many good Christmas movies we have that it wouldn't be a proper holiday if we didn't watch three or four of them. More details to follow, but if anyone's interested please respond. Hmmm, the stream is running down to a trickle and I've still got two hours to kill at work... time to surf again I suppose. Not like I should be finding something productive to do or anything like that. Best stop now. Current Mood: creativeCurrent Music: Electric Mayhem - Can You Picture That? | | Thursday, December 2nd, 2004 | | 5:42 pm |
Regarding this weekend
Just a quick update regarding this weekend. Mere hours after Kassi and I announced we were going to have a movie night on Saturday bunches of people figured out other thing they wanted to do on Saturday. To to spite you all, we're now going to hold movie night on Sunday! Mwha ha ha. Now you have no excuse. So that's anyone who's available come over to our place Sunday any time after noon and have fun, play games, watch movies, eat snack, hang out, etc. Of course, we're still free on Saturday if you were really looking forward to that. ;-) Current Mood: pleased | | Tuesday, November 30th, 2004 | | 5:23 pm |
Sometimes we need to step back in order to see the big picture
Sometimes I get so bogged down in work that I need to just get up from my desk and walk around to clear my head. In the old building I used to go to one of the central conference rooms that wasn't in use and lie down on the floor with my eyes closed. In our new building the floor plan is somewhat different, so tonight when I grew a bit of a headache I went off in search of solitude. I found it in the north-east corner conference room. Our new building is has floor to ceiling glass windows, with imitation steel blinds on every one. I noticed that by standing back or even sitting on the conference room I could see a lot more of the cityscape than if I approached the windows close up. So I sat back, and look at Raleigh at dusk. And it was good. The needless analogy of my evening aside, the only thing that's really been bugging me in my life lately is my career, or lack thereof. For those of you who don't know, I really want to work in the video game industry. I need a job in which I can be creative on a daily basis. My current job, while certainly not being a bad job, doesn't give me any creative outlet at all, thus I don't consider it a valid career choice. And I feel kind of suffocated, because I spend so much time working here and don't really know how to take those next few steps on the road toward my real job. I continue to read and learn and do thing to improve my skill set, but it is by far not enough to make me feel really qualified to even apply for anything, if I actually found something I wanted to apply for. I suppose I just felt like I hadn't really spoken up about my frustration lately. And I think I'm mostly frustrated at myself, because I believe that it's not just going to happen, that i'm going to bump into someone on the street and he's going to offer me a job in the industry. No I believe I'm going to have to work for it, to find it, apply for it, and really qualify for it. And if I believe it then it is the truth. And that makes my task all the harder. Current Mood:  thoughtful |
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sick