2006
Saved for posterity, or maybe for no particular reason at all. Here are some of the previous things that I blathered on about.
[Blahrchive]
December 21, 2006.
'Tis the Season.
I never did remember what I was going to write about back on Monday. I guess it wasn't worth mentioning.
Anyway, unless something major happens, I'm unlikely to update again in the next few days, so:
December 18, 2006.
Grr.
I'm currently frustrated by the fact that I opened up Dreamweaver to udpate my blog with something, and now I'm completely unable to remember what the heck it was.
December 13, 2006.
Slow'd.
GCA hit 1600 downloads at e23 today. Those of you paying attention will notice that sales have slowed enough that we're taking about six weeks now to sell a hundred copies.
November 27, 2006.
Wind.
Well, my OneTouch has been running just fine lately, so I guess it's not quite ready to die for good, and I can avoid replacing it for the moment. Stefan reminded me that I have terrible luck with many of my hardware purchases, and he's probably right. His stuff seems to run for years.
On the other hand, it's been a pretty good time for me and card games lately. At last week's Wednesday game, I won one game of Munchkin outright, and tied for the win in the other. (Two weeks before that, I'd also tied for the win at Munchkin. Both ties were with Kevin.) Then, this past Saturday I was over at Dad & Karen's, while Karen's brother John was visiting, and I won at the game of Rummy that we played. Woo hoo! That's the first game of Rummy that I've ever won over there.
We also visited the Evergreen Aviation Museum on Saturday, and that was pretty cool. Lots of spiffy old airplanes down there. And the Spruce Goose is huge--you can't really get a feel for how big it is from the pictures, but standing there with all the other planes arrayed around it, mostly under its wings, makes the point nicely. Even so, I was mentally kicking myself for not taking my new camera along with me to snap some pics for the scrapbook.
Finally, we had some snow falling today. It was too warm at ground level for it to stick, but I got to walk through a fairly thick shower of it on the way home from the grocery store, so that was kinda fun. The wind was really cold, though, and I was happy to get back into the warmth of the house.
November 19, 2006.
Technology sucks.
This is really starting to fucking annoy me: I appear to have yet another Maxtor OneTouch (this one's a OneTouch II) that's dying. This would be my third one in just a couple years. (Admittedly I retired #2 when it was just showing symptoms, rather than after it failed completely.) Apparently, my computer no longer recognizes its existence, although the FireWire passthrough to my other one still works. Of course, this is the newer one, which I was using for the regular backups of my main system drives. Fucking technological junk. Grrr.
October 31, 2006.
Boo.
It's Halloween. Our furnace is kinda wonky, so I told the landlord, and he sent someone over. The furnace guy will have to come back tomorrow to replace something inside the thing, a control bar or some such. And, just like our landlord, he has a strong accent, which makes him fairly hard to understand at times.
I had to move about a third of the stuff Cori stores in the garage to make room for folks to reach the furnace, and then put it back so she could park in there. And then I have to do it again tomorrow, when the furnace guy comes back to fix the thing. I hope she didn't have all those boxes arranged in any particular order. <snicker> As if.
October 24, 2006.
Tired.
Blech. Had an unpleasant visit with insomnia last night. I think it was just my chaotic braining flailing around, but it kept me up past four in the morning, and then I couldn't sleep past nine. Now I feel kinda icky.
Also, GCA crossed 1500 downloads at e23 today.
October 17, 2006.
Dust.
It took me over a week to find my MSDN copies of Visual Studio 2005, which I got with the December 2005 shipment. What's dumb is that they were actually in my binder where they belonged, but I managed to overlook them the first couple times I looked for them in there. It took me actually pulling all the discs out and replacing them to find that they were, in fact, in there the whole time. I must really be losing it. Now I have to install them and spend some time getting into the new environment, and working with all the new and different stuff. (It's a lot different from working with VB6 -- don't let anyone tell you otherwise. I had a time-limited version installed for a while previously, but didn't do much with it before time ran out.)
I'm also reading through a book on writing SQL queries. This has replaced, for the time being, the book I was reading to get up to speed on VB.NET 2005, because it's more pressing. The project I'm doing for J. would really benefit from some proper multi-table queries.
Overall, I've been feeling rather rusty, and kinda stupid, for some time now. Ignorance is not bliss. I really need to shake the dust off and get back into learning all the new stuff at full speed, but I can't seem to manage it. In years past, I'd have read my book knowledge in about a week, and been practicing it with my new programming tools immediately.
Oy.
Anyway, don't read the above as if I'm whining. I'm not. It's more of a conversational bitch session. And that's enough of it for today, whatever you want to call it.
September 21, 2006.
Hops.
I added a new scrapbook page with a few pictures of some little frogs.
GCA crossed 1400 downloads at e23 back on September 7, but I forgot to note it here.
I haven't updated the "I'm currently listening to..." list over on the right in a while, so it's longer than usual right now.
September 15, 2006.
National Security.
Steal an election with Diebold voting machines.
September 6, 2006.
Nothin'.
It seems I went through the entire month of August with nothing to post here. Not too surprising, really, since things have been relatively stagnant in my life lately. Which, believe it or not, tends to be the way I like it. Mostly.
Anyway, nothing much to say now, either.
As for gaming and such, our friend Alexandra was up from California over the Labor Day weekend, so that was nice. We played a Wasteworld game on Sunday, which Steve ran. I think three of our gaming group found their previous characters from the old campaign Steve ran and used those, but I wasn't able to find mine. I probably enjoyed playing the one Steve made more, anyway. Aly also went out to various clubs with various friends over the weekend, but I didn't participate in that. I hope she enjoyed her visit.
Oh, we also have a whole lot of caterpiller nests in our tree in the front yard. It's kinda icky, really, but I didn't know what to do about them. Now the caterpillers are wandering out of the nests--it actually sounds like water dripping from the tree after a rain shower, sometimes, with all the little caterpiller bodies falling to the ground. And they're crawling all over the place out there. Icky.
July 31, 2006.
So Sue Me.
Yeah, I said I wasn't going to post them any more, but I decided I like them here, where I can see them if I want to. So, GCA crossed 1200 downloads at e23 back on June 23, and crossed 1300 downloads today. Things have slowed down again, as expected, and are closer to the pattern we were seeing a few months ago.
That is all.
July 24, 2006.
Melt.
We've had too much heat here. I don't like the heat. At all. I went up to the grocery store this morning at 9, and it was already 80°F (27°C) outside. Yesterday and Friday both exceeded 100°F (38°C). Our air conditioner ran non-stop for hours, and barely held back the heat (it was running for most of that time with the thermostat showing one degree higher than it was set for). I'm just really glad that I have an air conditioner right now.
I've been reading a lot of novels this summer, with there being less stuff on television to watch. I've been rather enjoying it, and I kinda wish that I wouldn't be watching so much TV during the fall season so that I could keep reading more books, but I know how I am, and I know I'll be watching TV every night just like always. At least watching TV does a better job of turning off my brain for bedtime than reading does, which I suppose is a good thing.
July 11, 2006.
Still nothing.
Look at that. More than a month since I last posted anything here. See? I wasn't kidding when I said I didn't have a lot to say. I still don't.
June 6, 2006.
Brain food.
I don't really have a lot to say right now. Not too much going on that might be of interest to others.
In my professional life, I'm feeling inadequate at the moment, and the lack of real database experience is weighing on me. I'm trying to work through the new features in VS2005, and get up to speed with that, and try out database stuff there. The project I was using to learn database stuff with hasn't gone too well so far, so I think I'm going to try doing some more reading, and then do the whole thing in VS2005, instead of what I was trying to do in VB6.
I'm also trying to finally get into the REALbasic system I've owned for a few generations now, but never used. That's kinda tough to do while looking at VS2005 as well, so I haven't progressed much yet.
In my personal life, the regular television season is over, and I've been reading a lot more. I've finished three novels and a bunch of magazines, plus made some progress on some technical books. Maybe I'll finally catch up on all my back issues of my various magazine subscriptions now.
May 18, 2006.
Uptick.
GCA crossed 1100 downloads at e23 today, quite ahead of expectations. (It had recently been taking just over a month between milestones, as documented here on the blahg.) I don't know what caused the spike in sales, but I'm not going to complain. I am, however, probably going to stop mentioning the milestones here, unless something remarkable happens.
May 4, 2006.
Screens.
There are no screens in the windows of my office and bedroom, so I never open those windows. (Not that I'm really big on opening windows a lot, anyway.) With the hot weather coming, Cori wandered around the house the other day looking for a window that we might be able to take a screen from, so that at least one of my windows could be opened to help cool the house in the evenings. She found one that looked promising, and it measured out about right, so of course I did nothing about it right away.
This morning, after Cori nagged me about it last night, I popped that screen out and carried it around the side of the house so I could install it into my bedroom window. Except there was already a screen in place. I think I must totally have some sort of dementia, because I'd have sworn up and down that there were no screens in either of my windows. But there it was. I installed the screen in my office window, instead. (If there was a screen in that one as well, I'd know that there was some sort of conspiracy going on here.)
April 25, 2006.
Grand.
Yesterday it was at 998; today, 1007--a nice little jump that put us over 1000 downloads at e23 for GCA. It's taking us a little longer between milestones, but we're still hitting them faster than I'd expected.
April 13, 2006.
Go Speed Racer! Go!
Kory Aleshire posted to the comments for my last entry, and guessed that I probably didn't remember him. He's wrong. I think I'd actually be hard pressed *not* to remember Kory, or anyone else that I went all through school with. Kory, though, has an advantage because we were indeed good friends early on in grade school. I have absolutely no recollection, now, as to why that didn't continue, or even what years it may have covered. Anyway, I never really gave it much thought--I guess I just kinda idly figured that things happen, as they do when you're kids, and we just didn't hang out any more. I certainly don't remember any precipitating incident that may have cut things short, but that may just be the fact that I was so young at the time.
I remember one time when we were talking on the bus in high school--he was trying to get me to remember that we'd watched Speed Racer as children, and I just couldn't remember it. I had no recollection of it at all. I didn't actually remember anything related to it until a year or two later, when I saw an episode of Speed Racer on tv, which shook loose some of those locked up memories.
So, Kory, yes, I remember you. And yes, I even remember that we watched Speed Racer (and made witch's brew in the back yard). I don't remember too much else, though. That was nearly 30 years ago, after all. I am interested in talking to you, but I have an irrational issue (don't ask why, it's irrational) with calling people on the phone, so my calling you is unlikely to happen, unfortunately. If you have email, drop me a note and I will respond that way.
April 4, 2006.
Entertain Me.
Not much new going on here. Saw Inside Man this weekend, and it was very good. Saw V for Vendetta before that, and really liked it as well.
Read the last 11 of the 14 available Ultimate Spider-Man books over the last week. (I'd read the first three the preceeding week.) Now I'm caught up, and have to wait for them to publish the next book in late May. I've really been enjoying them so far (and there was a pretty funny scene with Black Cat in volume 14).
I also read The Ultimates 2, after having read The Ultimates last year. It was also good, and I'm looking forward to the next volume, because this one kinda stopped mid-story.
March 27, 2006.
Ugh.
I got a headache yesterday, and it was really bad. After some drugs and time, it was downgraded to just unpleasant. But I still have it today, and it's still unpleasant. I hate that.
March 22, 2006.
Activity.
It's been a busy week for me, at least as far as unusual activity goes.
On Sunday, I went with the family to see the Cirque du Soleil show Varekai here in Portland. I'd never seen more than a few snippets of such a thing before (when they had some acts on a late night talk show), and it was quite fascinating. I did not appreciate at all the little tiny seats in the tent/theatre, which were apparently designed to fit children, because I'm not a particularly large person, and there's no way I could fit in that seat without my shoulders sticking over the neighboring seats. That meant I ended up sitting crooked a lot. However, the show was good enough that I was able to forget about the discomfort caused by the seating, at least for periods of time. Should I ever see another show, however, it's only going to be if I have a reasonable expectation that the seats are wider.
Then, for the next couple of days, I've been fighting an ant invasion. It wasn't an invasion in force, so I was able to kill the little suckers faster than they would appear. However, they were pretty sneaky, and even managed to get into the fridge, which is interesting. Also, as best I can tell, they were entering the house from somewhere behind the fridge, which is also a bit odd. Anyway, I couldn't allow such rudeness to continue, so I braved the rain and went out to get some Raid ant killer, which I sprayed around the fridge. That has apparently stopped the little suckers for now, although it pretty well gassed me out of that end of the house, after a while. Much of yesterday, and so far today, I've had windows open to bring fresh air through that part of the house, to carry off the toxic odor.
In other news, Beaverton recently lost its Sayler's Old Country Kitchen restaurant. Apparently for redevelopment. That was a good place to get a big, juicy steak, and now they're apparently going to put something else in there. (Dad tells me the whole block has been razed, so they're probably building something new from scratch.) Even worse, for me, is that Beaverton is apparently also losing the Elmer's that has been down there for many, many years as well--for the same reason. I think that's just silly, as the new Cedar Hills Crossing already sucks rocks, and I loved that Elmer's (especially when I used to live down there, and I'd eat breakfast there quite often). Anyway, I have no idea what they'll be putting in at either location, but it's a good bet that in both cases it'll be something that I'll never visit.
March 20, 2006.
Again.
GCA passed 900 total downloads at e23 today, just over a month after passing the 800 mark. Spiffy.
Yes, the paragraph above was cut-n-pasted from the previous such notice, with the numbers changed. Remarkably, there wasn't much difference in time between 800 and 900 downloads, and I'd expected it to slow down rather more. I like it when sales just keep rolling right along.
March 18, 2006.
Science.
Science makes cool stuff: Nanotechnologists demonstrate artificial muscles powered by highly energetic fuels
March 16, 2006.
Imagine.
We've got a bunch of changes coming up on our gaming night:
- Kevin's game is going on hiatus for a couple months, as we've finished the current chapter and he needs time to plan the next one.
- Stefan has dropped out of the running for a slot, as he's moving off to Denver and won't be around to run anything.
- Arnie called during the game last night, desperately seeking to run something--soon. So I checked with the others, and we stuck him on the schedule starting week after next. It's funny, because he's not even claiming to have a definite plan for what he'll be running, beyond that it'll be D20, and probably D20 Modern.
- Jeff is getting much closer to starting his Rifts game, so we slotted him in as well. (I think this would be the first time I've played in a published system for which I've never even skimmed the book.)
Lots of campaigns jockeying for space, it seems. I was even planning to run a game, but perhaps instead I'll wait to see if one of the other things currently slotted peters out, goes on hiatus, or otherwise frees up a slot. Or maybe I'll just run on some other night, if I really do get to the point that I'm ready to run it. (I was planning one of two possibilities--either Shadowrun 4th Edition, or yet another bastard creation of my own, which I've been working on recently.)
March 8, 2006.
Nightmares.
I don't seem to have nightmares. In fact, over my entire life, I can only remember one single time that I've had a nightmare, and where I was really terrified. I can still remember a number of elements of that dream, and I had it as a grade-schooler. Since then, nothing. The worst I get is anxiety within the dream, such as my lost-in-school dream--and that's really no comparison.
So, my one nightmare. It's also a bit odd, but I can summarize it pretty easily--the lady who ran the daycare that I went to after school was chasing me, because she wanted to eat me. I was really scared, and trying to get away, but she was always right behind me. Very basic, really. The oddity came in with the fact that sometimes I'd be running, and sometimes I'd be rollerskating; that sometimes I'd be running through a building, and then suddenly I'd be rollerskating through the woods (and over the creek). And, of course, sometimes I'd be trying to run while wearing the rollerskates, which wasn't too effective.
Given how dreams go, though, that's probably pretty tame, even for a nightmare.
March 1, 2006.
Dream Theme.
Dreams are pretty fascinating, and they've interested me for a long time. I can remember reading books about dreaming when I was in junior high school, although I can't now remember what I might have read in those books. For most of my adult life, dreams have been more of a curiosity than anything else, especially since I'd go through long periods where I was unable to remember any dreams at all. Even now, though, there are a three basic dreams that I still hit quite often (in no particular order):
- Being lost in school. For some reason, I still have a lot of dreams related to school, both high school and college. All of these are basically the same, though--I can't find where I'm supposed to be, and I'm anxious about it. Most times, I'll be unable to find my schedule, which has the assigned rooms listed, so I won't know where to go. Other times, I won't have attended the class for the term, and I can't remember where it is.
- Struggling to get where I'm going. This one is usually me trying to run as hard as I can, but not getting anywhere. I'm exerting incredible amounts of effort, sometimes even trying to pull myself along the ground with my hands in addition to trying to run, and I just can't progress, I can't move forward.
- Flying. I'll just spontaneously start being able to fly through the air. By far, though, the most common version of this dream doesn't have me flying normally, but instead I can hover a few inches above the ground while standing, and I can move really rapidly that way--as if I'm riding an invisible, self-powered skateboard. I have no idea why 'skating' around would be my most common form of flying, but there you go.
I haven't noticed any particular relationship between which dreams I dream at various points in my life. They all still occur fairly often.
February 27, 2006.
Alien Dreams.
I've been having some odd dreams lately. As per usual, I can't remember most of them after a few minutes of wakefulness, but one I had the other day was pretty odd: it was a lot like watching a scifi movie, rather than being a participant of the dream. The main character, who may or may not have been me as a child, was in the midst of a weird alien invasion. These aliens would be hiding in the soil of some marshy fields during the day, and nobody could see them, except him. Then the aliens would pop up at night, and rampage, killing and abducting people. The main character somehow got hold of a sword, and started doing kung-fu movie style sword fighting against these aliens, who would block and attack completely unarmed. But they had nasty armored bodies, and claws, so it's not like it was uneven or anything.
That's pretty much all I can remember about that dream, now.
February 22, 2006.
Heh.
GCA didn't write itself. But I would be happy if it would at least try to improve itself a bit. Show some initiative, you lazy program!
February 17, 2006.
Coding.
GCA passed 800 total downloads at e23 today, just over a month after passing the 700 mark. Spiffy. Sales are slowing down again, though, so it'll be a bit longer before we pass the 900 mark.
Otherwise, I have started working through some book learnin', to bring me back up to speed with new programming stuff that I have largely neglected for years, as well as to bring me up to speed on the new VB.net 2005. It's kinda fun. I haven't reached too much new stuff yet, but that should be starting soon.
As for anything else to write about, I don't have much, as you may have noticed. I seem to be going through another phase of "nothing is interesting" to write about, rather than just writing about whatever pops into my head. Not that I've ever been very prolific here.
February 4, 2006.
Forgotten Genius.
I had something to say earlier in the day, but now I've forgotten. I'm sure it was amazingly insightful, but now you'll never know.
January 19, 2006.
Empty head.
Updating the site, but have nothing to say. That is all.
January 16, 2006.
GCA Update.
Yesterday, for the first time, GCA was the first product to pass a new milestone at e23: it passed 700 total downloads. This actually speaks remarkably highly of GURPS Mysteries, the current #2 all time download, as it passed 500 and 600 before GCA, and continues to do very well. I'm guessing that's one hell of a good book.
Today, GCA once again reached 100 downloads over the past 30 days, a number it hadn't seen in some time (prior to Christmas, it was at 70). Post-Christmas sales seem to be doing pretty well.
I continue to be pleased with GCA's sales. Now I just need to get these damn trait builders figured out, so users can more easily create their own traits and templates....
January 5, 2006.
Walkin'
Yesterday I went to see King Kong. I'd planned to take the bus over, but I left a couple minutes late, and the bus was a minute early, so I just missed it. Instead, I walked to the Evergreen Parkway Cinemas, and it turns out it takes about 50 minutes at my medium walking pace: 15 minutes to pass Mom & Rob's place (hi, Mom & Rob!), 12 more minutes to exit Somerset Meadows (on Park View crossing 174th), another 12 minutes to reach 185th (at Park View & 185th), then a final 11 minutes to reach the theater (lots of crosswalks on this last bit). Long walk. Then I did it in reverse to get home. (I really needed to go to the bank, which was my primary reason for having to go over there yesterday, and I did that after seeing the movie.)
I enjoyed King Kong quite a bit, thanks for asking. I do think it could have been cut down from 3 hours to be a bit shorter, but I enjoyed what was there, so don't think it was really necessary.
On the walk home, I decided to try out Stefan's suggestion of following the path through the power lines park over by Mom's place. If the path went all the way through to the housing developments in that direction, it would come out near my house. Unfortunately, the path only goes down to the next lower street, and to continue following the power lines would mean traipsing through the wet grass and mud, which I wasn't willing to do. So, no through route there, and I got a longer trip instead of a short-cut.
[2005 Entries (July - December)]
This page last updated January 3, 2007. Contents Copyright © 2006 Armin D. Sykes. All rights reserved. Click here to contact Armin.