Thursday, August 30, 2007

toddler is my co-pilot

i write this now with one hand, my freshly woken son on my lap and held by my other hand.

We are preparing for an early morning voyage. First on a medical errand (no-one is at risk, but not all is good), secondly to the distant mountains for the "great big garage sale" to which my wife's family is inextricably linked. I won't have a headset strapped to my face until tuesday, a fact which dampens my general sense of weariness at the sleep deprivation and poor hygiene I will be enduring over the weekend.

Got a smidgen more done with the flash authoring tool. I've decided that I should create a single object for the walls on my game. i even created a test with a ball and map layout created, and was totally unsuccessful at getting the collision detection to work. I suspect it's a scope resolution issue, because the code is contained within the ball object and I asked it whether it was colliding with the map object without actually telling it to look at it's parent, the _root. Akin to saying "are you currently touching the smurf?" to someone who doesn't have a clue what a smurf is or where to look for it.

At what point does a toddler become a little boy? Is there an age cut-off? Or does it have to do with a growing vocabulary, comfort with walking, ability to manipulate the world around him (such as the parents)?

That's all I can say for now. It's theoretically possible I'll be able to post before tuesday, but no guarantees.

Monday, August 27, 2007

Let's check the excuse file..

"Too busy"? Nah.. no-one would buy that. "Forced to construct plastic railway by 3-year-old at 5 am"? Too cutesy. "Busy preparing for flea market"? What's to prepare? All the stuff is up there. "T-virus outbreak"? Too epic.. "Blocking software at work"? That could do...

Howdy all you out there in blogger land.. Forgive my lack of updates, my work is now preventing me from posting to this blog from the office computer. Blogger.com has gone on the blocked list, while the blogspot domain is no yet iPrisoned.. I mean imprisoned. This means that from my desk I may look but not touch this site.

Friday morning I got up early, fully into the hour zero vibe, only to discover that I didn't actually remember how to operate the flash authoring tool. I've been giving myself some refreshers, and am feeling semi-ready to proceed. Tomorrow morning I should be able to do a bit, provided my son doesn't wake up when I get out of bed. He doesn't go to sleep with me at night, but he's very often laying on top of me in the morning.

And to my wife, who also reads but doesn't post here, happy anniversary. If I had it all to do over again, I'm sure I'd still sucker myself into it. Remember, the greatest gift you can give me for this special day..

No.. that's not it. I'm sure you'll figure something out. Much love. You don't need to wake me up for the eclipse, dear. I'll believe you.

Friday, August 24, 2007

iPhone unlocked, please run for your lives.

Sorry to go all web 2.0 on you, but this is a major thing to me.

Engadget confirms iPhone unlocking tool works

Within the next week I should expect to get calls asking to setup the iPhone to connect to the data service for my client. Hopefully this part here is accurate.

The General -> Network menu now has an EDGE network settings area where you can input your carrier's APN and username / password. We put in our T-Mobile info, and were immediately online. (Apparently these hidden menus were added in the 1.0.1 update, they tell us. How convenient!)

Nothing to do with anything else I usually talk about, I know. This is relevant to my job and it excites the hell out of me. Same way a rabbit is excited about large dogs chasing it.


Hour ZERO!

I'm trying something a little new.

Hour zero. I figure my day goes about like this.

Hour 1, i get up, head to work.
Hours 2-10, I work.
Hours 11-whenever, play with my son, watch the tube, do housework, go to bed.

.. So I need another hour. Or at least, I'm going to give myself another hour and see if it helps me.

Yesterday morning I got up an hour early. Got my computer on, downloaded the latest version of adobe's flash software. Don't work on 2k. 40 minutes done with.. Did some web surfing, then went and got ready for work.

This morning, I also got up an hour early. Got the 2004 edition. Installed it. Opened it up, and realized I didn't have a clue what I wanted to do with it. Gonna do some design thinking today, try again tomorrow. Ofc, tomorrow the Hour Zero lasts until my son wakes up, since I'm not working. I might get lured to bed by a lady needing a backrub (sadly, probably just that), but I should find some time to get productive on it.

Currently I'm thinking that "tower defense" games are a hot genre that don't seem to require a lot of thought, so I'm going to over complicate the hell out of it just to make sure I properly sabotage myself. Version 0.1 should probably just be vanilla TD, right? Then add other stuff?

We'll see what I do.

When I told my wife about this plan, her thought was that it sounded more like "time to screw around on the computer" than actually getting stuff done. I can't really argue against that point unless I actually prove otherwise.

Wednesday, August 22, 2007

MP3-tastic!


Compact, charges from your pc, long battery life. Brilliantly awesome FM tuner. requires extremely evil proprietary software to load MP3s, and I never actually got it to work.

Compact, somewhat more clumsy controls, good audio quality and hassle-free mp3 file transfers, fm tuner is underpowered, or mine is. I need to compare it with my wife's.

The second one costs less than 30 bucks, and came with 2 gigs. The first cost more than a hundred when it was bought, and was only 512k. Bit of a time difference, you'll understand. The gigabyte sony is now 99 bucks. Paying for the name, i guess.

Tuesday, August 21, 2007

Sometimes I pray for rain...

Which you wouldn't think necessary in this state.

I've been feeling the need for change, lately. I might end up moving to a small town, building a new life, but that won't be happening for awhile. For now I'm looking at finding something different where I am. Been sitting down for 8 hours with a headset strapped to my face for more than 2 years now.. it's become automatic, do the work, take the calls, go home, do other stuff. I don't dread going to work, but it's hard to get excited about it.

Most recently I had to make the difficult decision of asking my boss for a transfer. I've been on a contract for the last nine months in which I have to deal with some very frustrating things. calls where I can't hear the customer very well are commonplace. We get a ton of cold transfers, often transferred to us by the very department which should be taking the call. It's miserable. And I think the part that offends me the most is that the client pretends to care. They have an elaborate system for reporting misdeeds.. And I've heard, once, that I did something naughty. We can look up and see how many times particular individuals have been reported. Sometimes it is dozens. It feels like they just don't care.

I don't want to go into further particulars on this.. I'm not doing anything rash, I love my boss, I love the company I work for. Just sick of the client. They'll tell you this happens everywhere, but I did another thing for a year and a half. Got bored, but never this angry.

It's been hot and muggy.. Got steamcleaned the other night when my wife and I had friends over. Good night, though. We played two games of cranium, then i suckered everyone into The Great Dalmuti. Teh awesome. Too damn hot, though.

Made some vague pretense at forward progress. Got myself re-acquainted with my library account (got my 17 year old membership with king county library system, same card they first gave me), got some stuff on software testing. Now I only have to read it when it actually gets to me. software testing pays at least as well as I'm getting now, looks interesting, and gets this headset off my face, so i'm finding it tempting.

Monday, August 20, 2007

To plagiarize a friend

Tri-weekly to try weekly to try weakly....

So much stuff to catch up on.

Picked a terrible day to go to wild waves, had a good time despite.

Felt old the other day at the store. Heard a lady about 10 years my senior trying to explain to one ten years my younger the premise of the movie "Gremlins."

My head is foggy, I'll try to pick this up later. My brain seems to shut down over 70 degrees. Global warming can't be good for me.

Monday, August 6, 2007

On visitation

Currently i'm at work, and i'm very tired, and i'm feeling weird.

Why am I at work? Because they wouldn't pay me otherwise.

Why am I very tired? I have family in town. This is a happy thing. I don't see these elements of my family often. They're staying with us. This is also happy. I enjoy having them around. No doubt. It also means that I never really relax. I'm busy feeding people, or busy watching shows with them, or out seeing sights. Don't really get to veg out and do my own thing.

Why am I feeling weird? I lent out my cellphone. it's like a bodily appendage, sometimes. Not the sort of thing you freely pass on. I had to let them use it, though. Wouldn't be right to leave them without a lifeline to home.