| Things My Daughter Does That I Adore |
[Dec. 29th, 2008|10:48 pm] |
When she wants something, she says the question she wants to be asked. When ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) super_nyanko is upstairs on her computer - "do you want to go up and see her?" When she's getting frustrated with a toy - "do you need help?" When I get her out of the crib and on the changing table - "did you have a good night sleep?"
Lately she's been announcing that she's tired by asking if it's time to brush teeth. When we tell her yes, she runs over to the bathroom, pops out her pacifier, carefully places it on the counter, and reaches for the toothbrush. Aside from how cute it is, the fact that she hates having her teeth brushed yet happily seems eager for the routine is something that no adult would do.
We have a 24 piece Japanese children's vocab puzzle that we picked up on the last trip. She knows maybe 4 or 5 of them; for the rest she makes up distinctly Japanese sounding two syllable words. Things like "nishi" or "kikei" - not that these aren't real words, I'm sure, but she's certainly never been taught them and they aren't in the puzzle. |
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| The Big Three-Four |
[Dec. 18th, 2008|03:43 pm] |
It's the birthday day today... not doing much celebration wise. Being a parent really cuts down on those sorts of things, but we DID have the 20 week ultrasound today and found out that we're having a boy for kid #2. It turns out I owe chronovore some money.
Work has been kind of a bummer lately. Not for me personally, but some bigger stuff has been kind of sucky. I absolutely can't talk about it, unfortunately. We do have Christmas week off, and my sister and her family are coming into town then.
Oh yeah, we're going to be in SF in late Feb for a friend's baby shower. super_nyanko will be at around 6-7 months, so it's the very end of the travel window. A Double Fine friend was kind enough to offer her apartment for our usage, which is awesome.
I gotta get the snow blower serviced; my arms are killing me from yesterday and it's going to be like another 6+ inches tonight. Singing "Eye of the Tiger" to an appliance apparently is not a useful substitute for the recommended maintenance. |
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| Today's Conversation |
[Dec. 6th, 2008|08:12 am] |
Bear: Snow! Snow!
Me: Yeah, snow! Lots of snow! In a few years, you'll be out there shoveling because I'll be old an crotchety.
Wife: You're... young and crotchety
Bear: I'm cute! |
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| House Stuff |
[Dec. 5th, 2008|03:18 pm] |
We FINALLY started making some progress on the kitchen again. A couple weeks ago I put another coat of stain on most of the woodwork and trim, and last weekend we sealed. So now all the woodwork is done (mostly) and looks way better. More importantly I don't have to worry about not getting any water on anything. Now we're picking paint colors.
We're going to be transitioning the Bear out of the crib soon too, so the crib will be available for baby #2. Talked about that this morning with our day care provider, and it turns out her (the Bear) nap times got transitioned to a cot for a couple months already! So we're going to do it in the next month or so. We started giving her a pillow, and that's worked out pretty well.
Xbox issues are resolved, although I want to answer their questionnaire to give them some negative feedback on the their flow of info. I upgraded to NXE and within 10 minutes super_nyanko was asking how to make an avatar for herself. Still undecided on how I feel about it... some stuff that was easy to find before has given me some trouble since, but I don't know if that's just because it's moved.
Finally, super_nyanko reported feeling some kicking today! Which is good because it lets her move up to the next phase of her worrying pattern, but also came a full 6 weeks earlier than with the last pregnancy. |
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| Terrible, Terrible Design |
[Dec. 5th, 2008|03:01 pm] |
I've been playing Castlevania - Order of Ecclesia on the DS. Castlevania is a series that has always had multiple endings, and if you truly love the game then you'll play it until you get the "good" one. In one of the previous games, there's a "bad" ending where you fight a guy who has been bound to a fire demon. If you succeed in killing him instead of the demon, he dies and everyone runs in and says "yay, the world is saved" and it's game over. You're supposed to feel bad about killing someone who was possessed, I guess, but the writing is just so abrupt - they're clearly trying to make you feel like the game was cut short. Similarly in Portrait of Ruin, there's two vampire sisters whom you can either kill or de-vampire. If you kill them their vampire lord runs in and screams essentially "this wasn't supposed to happen! I guess I'm going home" and it's like, we don't even get to fight??
In this game you actually can choose which sub area to go to as separated locations on a map. One of these is a village. As you play the game, you can find and rescue villagers. I get to a final battle with the guy who has been amassing dark magic to fight Dracula, and after killing him I absorb his magic. You are then prevented from saving (which is also an auto-heal point)... the reason for this is because you are about to get the bad ending. You are told to equip the evil magic and prevented from leaving. Using the evil magic damages you, and if you barely made it through the fight you die and have to re-fight. After FIVE times I figured out what I was supposed to do, after using my only healing potion to play it safe. And my character dies (more cinematically) and it flashes images of the villagers I didn't find. Game over. Reloading from save puts me before the fight - but with all of the items I used in the previous attempt gone. BOOOOO! |
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| More Microsoft suckage |
[Nov. 28th, 2008|07:37 am] |
Well, a week ago my account was changed to say that my xbox was repaired and had been shipped back. They had UPS tracking info showing that the console hadn't been picked up from MS yet. Monday night that changed to say that it was in TX. On Wed, Microsoft stopped showing any UPS tracking info and changed the page to just say "Your repaired console has been shipped and is on its way back to you."
This morning I got two identical e-mails saying "we have yet to receive you hardware, please go here for account status. You will need a live ID. This is not a monitored e-mail address, please go to www.xbox.com/support for blah blah blah" Of course when I check the site it still says that the console has been shipped back. So I filled out their little support request form asking what the hell is going on, and saying that during the entire process the web site and the e-mails have been totally conflicting. I can't believe that with the volume of hardware services they've done that this process isn't more polished. |
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| Griping About Microsoft |
[Nov. 19th, 2008|10:05 am] |
I sent my 360 in due to RROD-age on Monday. I went to my xbox.com account, registered my console, and filled out the form... I think this was last Thursday. On the form, you have a choice of whether you want to wait for MS to ship you a box + UPS shipping form, just the shipping form, or if you want to print out a copy of the form and send via your own box. I chose the third option for speed.
So, Microsoft needs to have people go through this process and see how confusing this is. When I finished, it took me to a page that essentially said "Box Shipment: Microsoft is sending you a box. Please wait 3-5 business days. Form Shipment: Microsoft is sending you a shipping form. Please wait 3-5 business days. Electronic Form Return: You will receive an e-mail in the next 24-48 hours with further instructions while your return request is being processed. The e-mail will have directions on how to print out your shipping label. Please click this button to print your shipping label." It was like the most confusing page with instructions for all possibilities. So I went ahead and printed the label, even though it also told me to wait for further e-mail instructions.
On Friday I received two identical e-mails. Which again had instructions for all three return methods, and under electronic form again told me to wait for a separate e-mail. It did have a few links and tips for what to check for / how to pack. On Monday I got sick of waiting and sent it in via the original printed form. I checked my RMA status on the site and it had moved to "we are waiting to receive your console" so I felt justified.
This morning (Wed) I finally got an e-mail telling me to follow a link, click on a thing, then enter my service code number to go the page with the electronic shipping form. First time I followed the link I got to a page that said that their TOS had changed, and upon accepting it took me to the xbox.com main page. Closed it, followed the e-mail link again. It had the button I was supposed to click, but when I followed it there was no place to enter a service code number. If I hadn't decided to print the shipping form originally I would still be trying to figure out how to send my 360 in, 6 days after having filled out the original service request. |
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| Ouch! |
[Nov. 16th, 2008|08:24 pm] |
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I'm sitting with the Bear in front of iTunes right now. I decide to branch out a bit and play one of my favorite tracks off the Jet Set Radio Future soundtrack. About 20 sec in, she hesitantly says "more music?" |
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| Simple Victories |
[Nov. 11th, 2008|11:40 am] |
Up til about a month ago, I had to spend the last 20 minutes of my evenings cleaning the litter boxes. However, once the Bear started showing an increased interest in my work room in the basement, I decided to try to clean them while she's around. The things she does while I'm doing this include:
1. Picking up the dustpan broom (a compromise from the hard-to-manage full-height brooms) and briefly "cleaning" a variety of surfaces
2. collecting change and screws and shuffling them between a variety of locations
3. trying to grab a scooper and join in the litter box cleansing (discouraged)
4. climbing on a chair in the play room and then yelling for help
5. doing the basement circuit and getting to the basement landing, and then calling for help while I talk her into going down the two steps solo. Repeat.
and the worst worst worst... she's decided to call every dead beetle she sees, a ladybug. They're usually these 1/4" long weevil looking things. She excitedly picks them up despite my attempts to stop it. Once I get her to put them down, she sprints in a circle to do the basement lap yelling "I'm coming ladybug!!" goes back to right where she started, and starts picking it up again.
But it saves me 20 minutes of sitting on the concrete floor right before bed that I can spend on the computer. So it's definitely a win. |
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| From Shite to Awesome in 216000 seconds (approx) |
[Nov. 9th, 2008|10:15 pm] |
Considering that on Friday morning I woke up at 4:15am with the chills and left work at 2:30pm, barley able to get home on my own, it was a great weekend. You may be asking why I bothered even going to work that day - as it turns out, I had agreed Thursday to have that evening be dedicated to upgrading my machine to Vista64. All of our engineers have been doing it to support >3GB of RAM... it may sound crazy but depending on how complex your engine is and/or how much or little you depend on external middleware, Windows can actually require more space than 32bit memory addressing can handle. Especially the debug-enabled versions. I was no longer able to remote desktop in to work and all of my apps and source code needed to be reinstalled, so I went in. Came home early, slept for nearly 2 hours, had fever and chills the rest of the evening, crashed at like 10 after putting my daughter to bed.
( Rest of the Weekend ) |
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| Saturday |
[Nov. 4th, 2008|02:54 pm] |
Two big things happened on Saturday - talked to a bunch of kids about videogame development, and went to my boss's Halloween party. Not much to say about the party except that it was really nice going out and seeing people, our costumes were relatively lame - although not as bad as last year, and the Bear was strangely content to let us go out without any fuss. Which was weird.
Talking to the kids was fun. They were in the 5-6th grade range, and were essentially learning the basics of object oriented programming via a java wrapper game environment called Greenfoot. Pretty slickly done... the basic game object sits on top of the engine, and exposes a few functions that you can then override in however many sub-objects you create. You just drag the objects over to the game board and hit "run". So I was helping them fix syntax errors, then we did a Q&A on getting into the industry. We might end up helping out with some big convention they're doing in Feb. |
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| Well, Fuck |
[Oct. 30th, 2008|09:45 pm] |
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Got to see a RROD tonight. Twice. Third time, the thing booted up normally. Still, my unit is a near-launch model and I shouldn't be that surprised... I've had it for nearly 2.5 years. Talk about a pain in the ass. |
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| Statute of Limitiations, Please |
[Oct. 28th, 2008|09:47 am] |
I was listening to Japanese vocab on the train today and it reminded me of something that happened in high school that I still feel guilty over... really shows what kind of a teacher's pet I was. German nouns have gender, so you do not just memorize that table is "tisch" - you have to know that it is "das tisch" (neutral gender) to conjugate it properly. I know this is not unique to German, I'm just saying. Because the teacher always gave the vocab quizzes in the order of the textbook, everyone would remember the nouns as step 1 of study, and memorize "der, der, die, das, die, die, die, das, das" for the quiz separately. I think you can see where this is going.
I complained about people, myself included, being able to use this as a crutch when studying, which is complete bullshit. I obviously could have spent the time to learn things properly on my own and let everyone else alone. But of course I mentioned this to the teacher on the morning of one such quiz, and naturally it was a complete shock to everyone but me when she implemented the change that day. At heart I am a conniving dick. I felt so proud of myself too, for "shocking" my fellow students out of their false sense of security. |
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| Property Taxes |
[Oct. 27th, 2008|01:37 pm] |
Since I talked about it before, I figured I'd give a quick update. I called a property tax lawyer about my huge tax increase last month, and they called me back to say they were not taking the case - the assessed value was almost the same as what we paid for the house in 2006. Which is fine. It's hard to argue that the house's true value is not what you paid for it, and I like dealing with people who recommend against wasting my time and money. Although to be (un?)fair, they don't make any money if I don't, so it's not like they were really going against their own best interests.
However, in that conversation I asked about a little checkbox called the "Homeowner's Exemption." I had originally thought that it was like an income tax thing, like getting deductions for having dependents or being head of household or whatever. I had originally thought like "that can't mean me... why would they give you a discount on your taxes for owning a home? This a tax solely for home owners!" It turns out that it is an exemption you get for your primary home... like if you're a landlord you get this exemption for YOUR house but not the other ones. So the name, kind of inaccurate. I had that corrected and we just got the new bill on Saturday. Taxes went down by like a third. |
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| General Life Stuff |
[Oct. 27th, 2008|01:19 pm] |
As I'm sure most of you have heard, we are expecting a second child in May. So far the doctor's have had very nice things to say about us, our genes, and this pregnancy in general. Last week I went to an ultrasound and got to see the fetus moving its arms and fingers. It feels like it was way earlier than with the Bear. super_nyanko is pretty sick at the moment, unfortunately. She wasn't able to keep anything down on Friday and went to the hospital to get some IV fluids. It was a long weekend.
Got a couple fun Bear stories, though.
( Halloween )
( Weird thing in the basement )
Overall, lately, she's been in very good spirits and has been pretty outgoing. Far fewer tantrums, more accepting that meals are in the high chair. However, she's still pretty pushy and still wants to be carried around more than my lower back and arms can handle. She had her 2 year appointment a couple weeks ago and that went fine. I'm thinking of scheduling a weekend activity or like a swim class or something on Saturdays; it's gotten too cold to go to the park and there's no snow yet. |
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| Games Update |
[Oct. 27th, 2008|01:04 pm] |
I picked up Dead Space for PS3, and have enjoyed it quite a lot. Aside from the genre of game that it is, I'm interested in how it relates to what I usually work on with games - inventory input processing and controls, HUD, etc. It seems like a lot of games lately are switching to the bioshock / MGS inventory access model in story-driven 1st and 3rd person action games - a toggle button that takes you into a weapon selection interface. What makes it really interesting is how that affects what decisions are made in what's necessary for the HUD.
Anywho, also got back into Burnout Paradise a bit. Haven't tried the new bikes or any online challenges yet, but I have finally figured out what I was doing wrong in the stunt run challenges. Before, I was having trouble breaking 50k points, where the win condition is usually around 150k-200k. After correcting my approach, I think my high score was just over 600k after doing it maybe another 4 or 5 times. Really made me think about the (lack of) usefulness of learning a skill that's very specific to a single game... on the other hand, it was a fun exercise in observation of myself in how and why game players run into a brick wall and just call it "too hard" instead of figuring out that you're doing it wrong. I wanted a tutorial or a you tube video or something to show me what a good run looks like, but the prideful part of me is happier beating it on my own. I've watched other people play games and just do the same thing over and over thinking (I guess?) that maybe they haven't pressed the attack button enough or found the right spot... I usually want to step in and say "look, that obviously isn't working, so stop doing that!" Funny that, knowing that, it still happens to me.
Went back to FF VII Crisis Core on PSP, I'm about half way through now. I gave up on trying to play on hard mode the first time through, although now I can't possibly imagine playing through a second time. A FF fanboy I definitely am not. Finished Ninja Gaiden: Dragon Sword on DS as well, might pick up the new DS castlevania game one of these days. Man, I really want there to be a new Metroid 2D game. Maybe I'll take another crack at the Japanese version of Zelda: Phantom Hourglass instead. |
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| New Phones |
[Oct. 10th, 2008|04:21 pm] |
We both got new phones last weekend... I got the LG Dare, a touchscreen model, and super_nyanko got the LG enV^2. Can marketing people who create edgy characters and leet speak names please just shoot themselves now?
Anyway, previously with the Razr I had a lot of grief getting photos off the thing, and not being able to transfer audio back and forth either. It seems the real key to these things is purchasing a removable storage card. Yet even with that, they don't allow you to just copy mp3's over and set it as your ringtone. You can do that and listen to it as a music player... but you can't then make the ring tone association. I assume they do this to force you to purchase their ringtones... which, well, even if I was willing to pay for it twice, let's see if they have the soundtrack to Katamari Damacy in their library. The loophole, if it is that, is that you can e-mail an mp3 attachment to your cell phone number @vzwpix.com and save as ringtone.
In other news, the little bear has been great this week. I think the behavioral recovery from the Japan trip is over, because she's pretty much back to normal. She turns 2 on Sunday, and her 2 year checkup is in a week. Looking forward to seeing what they say.
Last thing. We got our property tax bill this week (local news article). I had gotten a whole bunch of letters from lawyers a while ago pledging to fight the property tax re-evaluation for a cut of the savings, and I was like "eh, we just bought this house - a re-eval was inevitable." However, it went up like 50%. And the best part is that since prop taxes are split into two payments, the entire year's increase is lumped into this bill that's due in like a month. So it's like paying all of last year's taxes at once. I'm going to be talking to a lawyer about this shortly. |
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| "Aim Before You Fire" |
[Sep. 25th, 2008|10:38 am] |
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Our office manager sent out an e-mail this morning with the above subject title. I was disappointed yet relieved when it turned out to be about the coffee machine. |
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