Mind Games

I have thought of it so many times, and dismissed it for various reasons. Too hard, too much cutthroat competition, not enough time, not a viable way to make money, way too many wanna-bes I don't want to get classified with them. But damnit, there is no other thing I would rather waste some spare time on than writing video games.

I think the main reason I got interested in programming and playing with computers at all was games. I would never have given a second look at my Dad's [TRS-80](http://www.kjsl.com/trs80/) if he hadn't shown me how to load up some game, he acquired from who knows where, with the data cassette drive and start playing.

> You are in a dark cave, there is a hallway to the west, another to the east and a smell > of rotting flesh from the south, you have a pocket knife, and there is a torch on the > floor.... What do you want to do?

I learned BASIC on that thing just so I could try and mimic what the authors of that wonderful game had done, and my love of programming came from video game roots.

Man, I was hooked, from then on I would have trouble with my body weight, because I would prefer to sit in front of the TRS-80, Atari, IBM PC AT, Beltron, Commodore 64, Nintendo, Sega Genesis, PlayStation, N64, PlayStation 2 than do other stuff. I mean sure I played sports, and did all kinds of other stuff, but sometimes it was a battle to pull myself from playing [*River City Ransom* ](http://www.seanbaby.com/nes/rcr.htm) one more time, "This time I'll win without buying the cowboy boots!"

Anyway, since then I have gotten degree's in Electrical Engineering and Computer Engineering, have taken numerous programming courses, have done programming professionally, and have always thought of doing game programming, but never had the guts to follow through. Always doing what other people thought was a more viable means of making money. But hell, I have a day job. I get paid that way, if I am going to do side work, that may eventually become a way to get paid, I need to do something I have passion for.

And video games are that passion. So yeah, add me to the list of all the geeky wanna-be's who tried this. Because I am trying. My goal is to have something playable by the end of September, and hopefully sooner. And yeah I am going to the dark side to do this, because if I do want to eventually make some money on this, I need to maximize that chance. I am going to try and do this in C# with DirectX on windows.

*GASP*! I thought you hated windows?! I thought you were mister Linux. Well I got news for you, to quote a lovable scoundrel, "Look, I ain't in this for your revolution. ... I expect to be well paid. I'm in it for the money."

So I start today, actually I started about 3 days ago, but I publically start today. So watch this space, for the next revolution in gaming. :)

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday, Michelle! I love you.

See, isn't this better than a real gift?

rain

looking at the rain, I'd rather be walking outside :-(

Marriott saves me from a trip to Guantanamo bay

So unless you have been living under a rock somewhere you know it is frowned upon to bring a knife onto an airplane. You also probably know that they have a little lottery to decide if a passenger gets an extra special screening by the TSA. Well I sometimes carry a Swiss Army Knife that was a Christmas Gift from my Aunt Judy, Uncle Dom and Niko. I carry it in my backpack that I use to carry my laptop and what at times is a huge collection of electronics gear (usb drive, ipod, travel alarm clock, headphones, airline headphones, usb mouse, cell phone, wireless pcmcia card, laser pointer pen.) Well I flew out of PHL today and the gear bag was at full capacity. And I won the TSA lottery for extra inspection.

Of course I don't know the knife is in there. And it turns out they don't either, even though I noticed the TSA worker looking quizically at my USB drive, and checking out my ipod. It wasn't until I was talking to Michelle a few minutes ago that I noticed the knife while I was looking for my cell phone charger.

Dammit. I have at least 3 more airplanes to get on. And to pass TSA security at least twice more. A knife has to light up like a christmas tree on the XRay machine, otherwise why the hell is the xray machine there. I could check my bag. What a PITA, especially since my original 2 flights and 1 of my subsequent flights were cancelled today. Where would my laptop end up?

So I decide to try the "At your service" line at the Marriot I am staying in. Well they hook it up, a fedex envelope is filled out and set to be shipped back toward my home, for hopefully not too much money. Now I can avoid becoming a mainstay on the terrorist watch list, or avoid further disgust and embarssment as my tax dollars at work to protect the airways continue to miss finding a knife in my bag.

Podcasting, Fools and Canadian?

Why does google think I am in Canadian. When I am at work and go to google.com it automatically sends me to Google Canada. I know Jersey is a little strange, but I didn't know we (the US) were shipping them off to be some other countries problem. Apparently it's All Fool's day as evidenced by all the half assed Slashdot stories and the whole assed Google Gulp product announcement.

I guess with it being a Friday I will have to read the the joke RFC too. Side note: If you try really really hard to tell a joke and it really is only mildly amusing, does it still count as a joke?

Also I downloaded ipodder last night and grabbed a few podcasts to listen to on the travel to and from work. Mildly interesting, I guess at least as good as some of the commercial radio around here. The only problem is the people tend to not have a very strict agenda and digress into really boring topics or inside jokes, it's like college radio where all they talk about is how cool it is to be able to communicate over this wonderous medium that is radio. "And here we are voices coming to you through the air, isn't radio great! I wish everone would do this."

Although I think an hour long podcast of just the little 5 - 10 second self-promotional rock and roll intros with ominous voiceovers that each caster inevitably makes for themselves would be fun to hear. It would be like just hearing that little segment of the Rob Zombie song Howard uses to launch his show every day, over and over. (Yeah I know, I am the only one driving around at 6 that hears this. But it sounds cool.) Seriously I think most of the people doing podcasting probably wanted to do it, just because they always liked this really cool part of some song wanted to have it as their intro music, much like the WWE wrestlers have, or that episode of the family guy when Peter wished for theme music to follow him around all the time.

"Ridin' on the bus. Ridin' on the bus. Ridin' on the bus ...."

Audio books & Moles

The ipod experiment is a success so far. I just finished The Gunslinger by Stephe King. It was pretty good, I guess this is probably the best way for me to read the dark tower series. The only problem I have is now I have to wait until the 17th until I can get another book on my audible.com subscription. I guess I will need to hit up the library to find some books on CD. I also ordered some Moleskine pocket notebooks today. From Moleskineus. One I am going to use as a general purpose notebook. The other I am going to use to start a journal to Allison, something she can read someday and see things I thought about while she was growing up. (Thanks for causing me to snap into action on this Ryan.) Now I just have to make an effort to write in it.

I wonder if it matters what kind of pen/ink I use, I want to make sure it doesn't fade too much over the years.

ordered an iPod

Well I am joining the ranks of people who have a way too expensive toy. I had a good experience listening to an audio book during my commute, so I took some birthday money, money saved from cancelling my Investors Business Daily subscription and the offer from audible.com to get $100 toward an audio player for signing up for a 1 year subscription, and got the best deal I could find. I grabbed the iPod photo 40 GB which is discontinued, but is currently available through amazon for $360.00 which is of course only $11 more than the 30 GB iPod photo. And the 40 actually comes with a few more accessories (AV cables most notably). Sure it's slightly bigger (0.12 inches thicker and 0.5 ounces heavier) but I think I can deal with that. You can make the purchase even more inexpensive for me, by buying one yoruself using my referral code: iPod photo 40. Now I won't have to try and carry wallet photos around either. I also got the Monster Cable iCarPlay iPod Wireless FM Transmitter so I can listen in my car, which is the whole point.

Hopefully it will be arriving in time for me to spend a long weekend playing with it. Excitement abounds.

Prodigy

My daughter rules! Yesterday as a belated birthday present she rolled over last night after dinner. Apparently she was practicing this trick all day while I was at work, and waited until I got home to finally pull it off. I was and continue to be not only amazed, but also proud and outwardly aloof like I expected it all the time. Of course my little girl can do things better and faster than everyone else ;-)

Anyway, It was not a one time fluke either, reports out of Montgomery County are just in saying the feat was repeated this morning, with authority. There are a bunch of short but very large AVIs of her trying to roll over, on the increasingly growing gallery, the snapshot here is from one of her initial attempts.

Happy Birthday to Me

"The say it's your birthday ...." Thanks for all the food gifts and well wishes I have gotten.

No More Homing Pigeons

Well I can now retire the homing pigeons, I have this new fangled technology that allows me to talk to people miles away without shouting. Sure it takes 2 copper wires instead of the preferred 1 string and two tin cans, but boy is it keen. Anyway this is just the follow up to my entry on the absolute bungling of my phone service by CavTel, the Verizon guy came here today and was here for about 10 minutes. I now have phone service. I wondered shouldn't I be without service for 6 days after he claimed I was turned on? Apparently thats not how they do things.

The only downside is that I have a new phone number, because I didn't want to be without service forever while the phone companies sorted out the paper work to get me my old number back from limbo. So if you need to call me, get my new phone number; somehow.

Maybe I should send CavTel my cell phone bill and associated brain tumor also.

Like a lion

The continued snowing is vexing me in my commute and in my desire to not shovel. Luckily one of my neighbors has been using his snow thrower early and often, and over a good portion of my property. So thanks for the hand, Ray. I know you will probably never see this, but hopefully your daughter gave you the cookies my wife baked for you after the 2 feet we got a little while back. I left early today to hopefully keep my work to driving ratio high. And if it keeps snowing all night, I may be sitting in my living room working tomorrow. A guy could get used to working from his recliner. If only this laptop didn't get so hot.

Sinking In

Today I noticed my carton of orange juice says "SELL BY: DEC 16." This in itself is not very odd or interesting, but coupled with the knowledge that my child is due on December 5th made me pause for a moment this morning and think, "Damn, I have food in my fridge that could still be there when my life makes a very dramatic change." It's pretty funny when you have these big life changing events that you know about in advance. I mean sometimes there are pretty dramatic changes in your life that are either abrupt or take a long time, but they are often unexpected or not noticed until afterward. But some you see coming from way off and just the huge wash of emotions that you go through as they approach is a big part of this experience we call life. My experience just got ratched up a notch in intensity by noticing that date today.

Well, I hope you come soon, baby. I'll save you some orange juice.

Currently Reading

The palm reading kick is in high gear. I started We the Media by Dan Gillmor, (Book Site) on Saturday and am about 11% through (I don't know what page that is, but I am basically into chapter 2 at this point. And I am diggin' it so far. It's about the media revolutions and the rise of grassroots journalism through weblogs and reporters who get it. Actually it has been inspiring some ideas which I am hoping to look into a little more in the coming weeks. It's probably worth a read, especially if you like reading nearly as much as I do.

Six Times

In the past week more than six times as many messages were delivered to my spam folder by spamassassin than my inbox. (not counting mailing list traffic). I also probably had about 10 - 15 spammy messages sneak through to my inbox. So thats:

• 59 to INBOX
• 373 to the caughtspam folder
• 10 misses
• 0 false alarms

That means I got 7.8 times as much spam as I got messages in my inbox. I am sure there are much greater horror stories out there, but damn, I really am not going to buy a rolex or prescription drugs based on an email that looks like a ransom note, because of all the interspersed mispellings and numbers to try and make it through my filters.

Rhetoric 101

Background: My brother, Tom, is teaching a college freshman rhetoric course and has recently shown Farhenheit 9/11 in his class and apparently asked for some sort of reaction paper to be written. There also was a paper comparing the rhetorical techniques of Gandhi and Malcom X. Seen in Tom's away message:

In grading student papers over the weekend, I've learned the following:

• It's not fair to remove a president from office before he finishes a war he's started.
• The war on Iraq was unjust, the president doesn't seem qualified, and the facts presented in "Fahrenheit 9/11" are disturbing, but it's unpatriotic to question the president and wrong to vote against him.
• Gandhi was a "coward and a suck-up" and "soft"
• During the 1960s, "some slavery" was beginning to be abolished.
• Americans never get to hear Bush's side of the story
• Direct quotes: "you are a liar" (to me), and "Michael Moore can eat *&@!"
• Gandhi is more like a "Care Bear" than Malcolm X
• It's "fucking awesome" that Bush was a cocaine addict and alcoholic

Those are the building blocks of some fine arguments.

Take that Giff

Apparently sunday is Alumni day for the Eagles, so they have this great picture of Chuck Bednarik, after practically destroying Frank Gifford's insides, on their site.

Two and Oh!

E - A - G - L - E - S! EAGLES!!!!!!

Register to vote, win cash!

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