Ben's Busy Blog

Foreword: Yup, I finally updated the style to match the rest of the site. At the moment, it seems a bit less soothing than the previous style. Feel free to drop whatever random feedback you might muster.

I biked for foo calories in 15 minutes. (If it still says foo when I publish, that means I forgot to check the bike)

Oooh baby, housekeeping today. Emptied trash bins, cleaned out litterboxes, and gathered recycling. Then I got to take it all down to the dumpsters. Yay. I also vacuumed, covering the hallway twice in the process. It was just dirty. After this I field stripped the vacuum and washed the cyclonic receptacle and first stage filter. It's kinda necessary, since we think that we'll get a vacuum around the wedding time. The current vacuum's getting to the point where you can smell smoke sometimes when it's running... yeeeeeah...

I researched and updated copyright notices on LiquidBen for the new year. That crap is always heavy to consider, and yet it's silly because I doubt that I'll ever really get to exercise it to my own profit. Either way though, I should CYA. After that I updated the Busy Blog format to match the rest of the site. Hopefully it won't appear too god-awful. At worst, it'll inspire me to tweak and update the overall visual feel and appeal of my site design.

Oh, and I tossed a block in for Google ads over there on the bottom left under "Sponsored by". I have absolutely no clue whatsoever what will come of it. At the moment, it doesn't seem to be pulling any content down, but I'm not particularly alarmed or taken aback. We'll wait and see what on happens.

I worked my way through day 8 of the C# book. In order to complete it today, I had to skip over the multipage week-ending program that they had slipped in. It looks like a great review, but c'mon, seriously? IT'S A SEVEN AND A HALF PAGE PROGRAM! There's no way I'm going to idly transcribe that. It's a serious undertaking. I will admit that I intend to transcribe and review the whole thing. So far this book's transcribery has been informative and educational for me, so I believe that I'll draw good educational material from this. On the other hand, it's gonna take a while.

When I got on the phone with Dave tonight, I finally rewired the Xbox 360. No longer banished to the depths of our Magiker tv unit, the 360 now lurks unseen, standing on end behind our flatscreen tv. If I hit the eject button, the CD tray sticks out from behind the beast. I like the new position. It makes sense, and it's convenient. I also played the Crackdown demo for Xbox, and then watched the HD version of the 300 trailer that's available on Xbox Live. Pretty sweet that.

I then ended my night by fiddling with Windows Media Player v11 to see if it would work at all for sharing media with the 360. I haven't tried the sharing end of things yet, but I already loathe the software.

Frightening fact of the night: In the middle of typing "sharing media 360" into Firefox's search bar, it suggested "sharing my wife". Jesus Christ people! What the fuck are you using Google for?!

Biked 420 calories in 15 minutes

Repairman called, is dropping by to replace screen in bathroom. Took a quick shower and cleaned up a little bit before he got here.

Cooked myself eggs for breakfast along with warmed up pancakes from day previous. Decided to use extra ham from recent chicken cordon bleu along with a couple slices of the bread I baked in order to make it a breakfast sandwich.

Cleaned out a stack of old papers. I shredded a good deal of them.

Researched the results of marriage on Nat's citizenship. From what I surmise, she's okay to stay British as she wants, but I sent an email from her Gmail account to the British Consulate. I've also got contact information for the Allegheny County Recorder of Wills. Will call them soon.

Worked on bills. Everything is getting processed by me now. Some account setup is required. I also found myself organizing my desk space in the process in order to get set up for doing this.

Nami had a veterinarian appointment today. That took a few hours to get worked out.

After I got home, I finished up my work on the bills. There are a few that I inherited from Nat, and there are some issues there that have to be resolved before I can do them.

I worked my way through day 7 of the C# book. It was a slower slog. It looks like the chapters are getting more difficult, but I hope that I'll catch up by doing more than one a day.

I'm going to make an aim. I'm going to start a project, a new blog. Each week I'll put out one game concept, and one short creative work like an essay, poem, story, etc. I haven't thought this through deeply, but it sounds like a fun idea. Publishing these things publicly gives me qualms about ownership troubles, but on the other hand, I wouldn't be doing them if I didn't have the open internet to plague me, now would I?

Anyway, my wordings are getting overworked and messages are getting garbled. I need to hit the hay.

L8rz, Ben

Well, today got off to a what I'll privately think of as a good start, as Nat canceled the dreaded get-together with her parents. With the way that tensions were building up for it, I don't know if anything good could have come of it. I need to remember to keep on Nat to write her father a note though, since the ball is in her court if she wants to start a written correspondence with him. Maybe if we see Dr WG this week, Nat will be able to form a healthy plan.

After the sleep-abating tension was passed, I was on my way to a second sleepy day in a row. I decided I'd start the day with a fit of banal debauchery: I made pancakes from scratch. They were tasty, but to be honest, they just weren't the same as Bisquick Shake 'n Pour.

The rest of the day was spent largely in relaxation, and I think I really needed it. I watched a little of Sideways.

In the end, I did two days (chapters) of C# though. Anyway, it was a good day off.

I had a sleepless night last night because I had two cups of coffee in the evening. The first one was probably a good idea, the second one I should have just pitched and not drank. Either way, I was awake for hours at night in a fashion that's atypical for me.

Tomorrow Nat's going to be seeing her father for the first time in a long while. She's majorly stressing over that. I expect it to go poorly and that I'm going to spend hours beforehand and afterward comforting her, especially based upon how upset she's been today.

I also didn't do any C# lessons today. I made a half-hearted effort at doing XNA programming, but wound up listening to 1UP Yours podcast with my eyes closed for like an hour. That's not typical behavior for me either.

At least I rode the bike today...

I skipped biking today, feeling tired and a bit depressed. I'd felt some of the same way on Thursday, but had pushed through, but today I just soaked in the shower for a while. I think that additional interruptions of my sleep overnight drained my resolve.

A healthy part of the day was taken up by dinner with Jim and Melanie. A couple hours out along with (rounded up) a couple hours of drive time along with some time spent with Natty calming her nerves. It's weird how much time it took.

I did a couple of XNA lessons at Riemers. His XNA lessons are actually a generational evolution of his previous tutorial on programming DirectX via C#. The XNA and DirectX tutorials have corresponding sections and you can compare them to see how his code's become more polished, and how some of the logic is exactly the same. That's cool. Unfortunately Riemer missed a few things in porting the lessons. The full block of code present at the end of each day's tutorial is functional and working. In some instances though, snippets of code presented inline with the lesson's text haven't gotten updated. It's no fault of Riemer's genius*, he just needs a proofreader. I've been there. Regardless, this slowed me down and I wound up signing up for his forums in order to let him know this as politely as possible.

* Genius? Perhaps the praise is too high, but I love this guy. He actually can fucking teach. I tipped him $20 via PayPal today, and he's worth every penny and more.

I ran through one of the "type and run" lessons in the C# book. It actually consisted of two multi-page programs to transcribe. One was a command line, while the other took advantage of Windows Forms. The WinForms version was a little screwed up in its GUI layout, so I had to play with it in order to get it to turn out right. I'm not sure whether this is something I should have skipped, because after spending a couple hours on it, it was too late to really get into my day 5 chapter. I'm a bit confused, since I honestly spent good time learning crap while programming and troubleshooting the 2 and 3 page programs respectively, but I fell behind on my daily learning schedule. I've been thrown a curveball. I guess that tomorrow I'm just going to try to do two chapters, but if I fall behind on their schedule, I won't feel guilty. I learned things today. I was a good-enough scholar to satisfy myself.

GarageGames has started some sort of thing called the Great Games Experiment. I signed up for it just to try to figure out what it is. I also tried to figure out what "Torque X" is. I haven't quite figured out whether it's a pipeline management tool for tying Torque to XNA, or what...

I know I killed some time in the middle/beginning of the day, but I don't really know how much at this point of the evening. Or what particularly I was up to... *shrugs* I'm not dissatisfied at this point.

Quick and dirty blog tonight. I haven't moved my life forward significantly today, but I definitely am tired. I was busy today.

I pushed and hit 443 calories on the bike today, in fifteen minutes. I would have done more if I didn't jump off the bike to squelch the volume when NatureWatch came on. They really need to fix the volume on that.

I baked a loaf of 'cheesy potato bread', then cleaned up the kitchen. It came out tasting pretty good. I emptied the dishwasher.

Sopped more water leakage out of the fridge. We need to get that condenser looked at before the humid days of summer are here.

Cleaned up the house a bit. Today I targeted those places that we always ignore. Those places that build up stacks of papers and crap that you just don't deal with. I got Natty to help too. We also took down the Nativity figurines off of the mantle. The Christmas tree is going to wait, since that's a major undertaking in order to dismantle.

Wrote some carefully worded correspondence with the homeowners association president about the damage that the roofers are doing.

I cooked chicken cordon bleu for dinner. It came out really well. Natty was my assistant, which was brave for her. Then I cleaned up the kitchen again.

We went to the grocery store.

I read my book today, but didn't program anything, since today's C# was really just a crapload of repetition from C++. I didn't finish my course of study at Riemer's today. There's no excuse. I just started late. I'll try to work on that more tomorrow.

Today I got up and biked, and then went downstairs and did some weight training. I kept it simple, since I didn't want to push myself too hard.

Later I skimmed over the variables chapter in the C# book a second time, then did the next chapter, which again dealt with variables. I didn't program much of it as it was 80% concepts that I'd learned before, and 15% stuff that I've already ran across in the XNA tutorials. Speaking of the XNA tutorials, I did another page over at Riemers.

I walked a box over to the post office to ship my niece her birthday present. Went to the store with Natty. I goofed around on the Xbox 360 for a bit.

We're already receiving email and word of mouth from people who've received our invitations already. I also finally received a reply from the wedding photographer, who's apparently been sick. Now that we've got his prices for services, we can cut a contract and get that taken care of.

We had two different doctor's appointments today that we could have gone to, although logistics argued that we'd only be able to do one. We wound up going to neither. I'm getting pretty frustrated about this. I've said before it messes me up because I plan my day with large blocks pre-obligated, but then I never manage to fill them after they're vacated. I think I had a particularly lazy day though, and it bothers me. Sure, Nat's nerves are just completely blown, but I'm wearing down a lot too. We were fighting last night, mostly wedding stuff. I'm starting to get pretty worried.

Ugh, today was a loser day. I was all spaced out, and Nat was wracked with nerves about seeing my parents for dinner. This was the first time that she's gone out to eat since her stomach problems started way back in November. Also we knew that my mother would have all sorts of questions about how the wedding planning is progressing, and we've got a lot of stuff that has been put off due to Nat's nerves. *sigh* The worst part about dealing with Nat's nerves is that it leaves me completely... burnt out? I don't know if that's the right term, but after I get her somewhat calmed down, all I want to do is blow off steam. I reaaaally don't want to work. *sigh* I'm starting to change my opinion on this being a therapy-resolvable problem, and more of a brain-chemistry issue. On the other hand, I don't know if I can pull that off, since I haven't been able to persuade her to take medication that's supposed to affect her gastrointestinal tract's nervous system since it's also used as an anti-depressant (but in 10x the dosage).

I sort of completed my C# and XNA studies for the day, but I kinda glossed over the C#, since it was by and large repetition of concepts I already knew. I could have spent more time on it, but it was sooooo hard to not space out as I read about variables for the hundredth time in my life.



Well, at least I biked.

Today I tried to change the way that I assign myself tasks. Lately I've been just heaping up a big list that I am never going to finish in one day. That's been rather wearying and just engenders a feeling of futility. Since this also doesn't allow for relaxation time, you get to feeling guilty because every minute spent on yourself is stolen from potential productivity. I've changed my plans now so that I'm going to just pick a small selection of things to do in a day and definately complete those. Today was a success, but I think I might have kept the list a little short.

I got up and biked well as always, or at least of late. I think I'm going to try to start spending time on the weight-set in the basement. Hell, I paid for it.

I did well with my studies today. I ran through another stage of Riemer's XNA tutorials. Then I ran through the Day 1 chapter of my C# book. The lack of reliance on the Visual Studio IDE is a little odd, as one Amazon critic points out: almost any .NET developer is going to be using the IDE. I'll be forgiving though, as I think that the book was written before the Visual Studio Express series was available.

Anyway, I also took out the trash & recycling, cleaned out the cat boxes, emptied the dishwasher.

Nat and I ran out on some errands, picking up her new glasses. Also we stopped in at Kawaii Gifts to shop for a birthday present for my niece.

Later I finished watching A Scanner Darkly. I played some Zelda and that was it.

I had included completing the invitations as one of my big tasks to do today, but Nat sort of commandeered that project away from me. I should have added something else to my to-do list, but I enjoyed actually spending time specifically to relax for once, instead of stealing time. I think tomorrow will be another productive day... as soon as I figure out what needs done

It's been a rough day, having been damnably tired all day. When Nat kicked me out of bed, I groggily crawled into the shower and tried to enervate there by soaking up some heat. From there on, the day was a stumbler.

I did some work on invitations today. For some stupid stupid stupid stupid reason, it's considered gauche to include wedding registry information with your invitations. Don't tell Nat I said this, but this is because weddings are run by women, and women read too much crap into things. Would that a guy received a note with his invite, he'd likely not mind. Either way, I wasted at least an hour trying to gather and compile info for the invites...

I watched a little of A Scanner Darkly. It's worth a short visit for the rotoscope-esque animation at least.

I really enjoy the XNA tutorial at Riemers.net, but the last few nights, I've been stalled every time I try to start it. I should push on ahead with that AND restart the C# book.

Anyway, l8r

-- Ben

Today got off to a shitty start, thanks to our cats. Perhaps around 5 AM, there arose quite a clatter from the kitchen. At Nat's urging, I crawled and stumbled from bed to investigate. Turns out that one of our enterprising felines managed to knock a heavy cookie sheet, a corkscrew, and another glass from Ikea which shattered everywhere. Nat and I got to spend an hour or so cleaning up shards before we went back to bed and crash. Fun...

After that, the day went kind of weakly. I did get on my bike and ride well. Later, I printed out labels and an index sheet for invitations. Custom printing weird papers, like the labels, always takes some fiddling around, and the reference page was one of those times that you need to draw up a report in Excel. Meh, that always soaks up more time than it should... mostly because you wind up screwing around with pointless little nuances.

Nat had a rough day between anxiety and gastrointestinal distress, with each feeding off of the other. I spent a lot of time hanging out with her. At one point, I played Elebits while she watched. That was kinda fun.

Anyway, I can't say that it's been a banner day. I haven't been able to concentrate when I tried to. XNA isn't moving forward. :( I feel stalled, but it could just be the lousy night for sleep.

Today wasn't an easy day, but I won't go into that. I got up, biked well. Spent a lot of time on the wedding invitations. Played some Elebits on the Wii, while Nathalie watched* ..then the rest of the day was generally a waste. Later


* This originally typo'd as "white Nathalie watched", which leaves me wondering as to the identity of black Nathalie.

Got up and biked well. Sleep didn't go well last night.

I got a haircut from Natty today. I was a bit overdue, so there was a lot of hair. It took me a while to clean the bathroom up, despite having put down dropcloths earlier. I'm going to go out on a limb and say that at the very least, it took up the better part of an hour.

Nat was nervous again today, so I wound up sitting with her a bit. There was one longer period of time, but then there were also several shorter stops. At one point I chilled on the bed with her, each of us playing our own DS.

In terms of wedding planning, I worked on some invitation stuff. Since we needed to include information about acquiring rooms in with the mailings, we decided we'd print it on a business card. The business cards that we picked up from Office Depot did the trick, but it was the sort of thing where it required some experimentation to get right.

Nat and I also discussed our honeymoon plans, and our plans regarding our move this year. We've nominally picked July as our departure window. We are still trying to figure out where to go. We like it here in Pittsburgh and wish we could stay, but there are various reasons why it's hard to stay. I won't go into those, but we talked for a while and worked on some criteria for a new home.

I took some time and set up the new universal remote for the tv, dvd, vcr, cable box and stereo receiver. I haven't tried screwing around with the macros yet.

Today was alright... I'm just tired and not really producing any insights as to how it went.

Well, I need to get my butt to bed, so this will be short. I got up and biked well. I installed a shelf in the kitchen. I assembled some shelves for in the hallway. I tried a new XNA tutorial and enjoyed it a lot, but I encountered a program error that I couldn't diagnose. Tomorrow I'm going to try compiling his source code to see whether I missed something. We had a bit of a crap-up tonight due to a letter we received, so I'm not going to get into it here. L8r

I biked 400 calories in 15 minutes again, this morning. It's becoming old hat at this point.

Nat and I made it down to the Waterfront today, for a little shopping trip to burn our Xmas gift cards. We hit Target, Office Depot, Petco and the craftstore. We grabbed things for around the house and for the wedding. This took a few hours.

After we got back, I ran out to Blockbuster and the grocery store.

I took a C# lesson, and I'm starting to get a little annoyed. I'd been enticed to pursue the video series by the advertisement of the final project being a self-programmed RSS reader. The videos were actually pretty neat little insights into the workings of Visual C# 2005 Express and Windows Forms creation. The problem is that the last few videos, which dealt with the creation of the RSS reader, were very distant overviews of the creation of the RSS reader. It would have been one thing if the code was flashing by, as I could quickly pause the video and transcribe, but the Windows Forms creation is done by GUI actions. If you don't see the gestures and menu selections used for generating a layout, you may never guess what was done in order to generate that white-backed multi-line text box. What is it? Can you select stuff in there? One at a time or multiple? There's no way to tell.

Now the video tells you to download the project files available from the webpage, but there are no non-video files available. This is because the video's available here are actually leased from this website. Oops, I guess MS either forgot to ask for, or provide the goddamned source. Ugh. I think I might just jump ship and go from my book from here on out.

Anyway, today is the second day where I leave myself wondering where the hell the day went. I feel like I could have accomplished more, but I didn't. At the same time, I feel this uncertainty about how much I did and how much time it took up. I really honestly can't say whether I was lazy today or not...

Anyway, crash time. (I say "anyway" too much)

Ugh, today was very dissatisfying for me. I did a little crap around the house and took a C# lesson. I even did a little bit of an XNA video, but the thing that bugged me the most was that I wasn't able to get Nat to go any farther than the grocery store. Nat told me that she didn't think that she'd even be able to make it to there today, but that wasn't enough for me. Dave brought out the good point that it's only when she's got her back to the wall (eg: for Christmas), that she's really getting a move on. I'm going to have to formulate an approach for expressing this to her. She keeps on moving the goddamned goalposts. Her wonderful parents have ingrained her with such a sense of inferiority that she thinks she's completely incapable of anything. *sigh* But although they take the blame, Nat's the one that's responsible now for moving on with her life. I'm not sure what it's gonna take, but I'm going to keep trying to get her to go to her therapist again.

BTW, A Tribe Called Quest is good zone out tunes.

I really ought to remember to do my blog before I'm completely lulled and ready to go to sleep. I'm going to keep this terse as my best thinking efforts are dedicated to remembering what the hell I did today, instead of spewing out amusing verse.

Let's see, it was a poor night for sleeping last night, so I got up a little late. Rode the bike dutifully. Still doing well for calories vs time.

Umm, I took out the trash. Oops, forgot to do the litter boxes...

Did a couple loads of laundry. This took longer than it should have because I kept on getting blocked out of the damned washer and dryer. I took a nice guy angle and dried a forgotten load of laundry for the neurosurgeon downstairs. He's alright, and it's probably good to stay on his good side in case Nat needs to hit him up for advice.

I took one of the C# lessons. That went by fine.

Hrm, we went to the grocery store twice. Once to drop off a prescription and hit the bank. Then we went back later for normal shopping and to pick up the prescription.

Hrm, I know that I didn't blow off the day completely... where the hell did it go? I spent a bit with Nat when she was nervous. I could probably chalk up an hour or two that way. Oh, and I was on the phone with my mother and stepfather for a while. Oh and I took some excess cardboard boxes down to storage.

Anyway, it wasn't a wasted day.

L8r,
Ben

I didn't bike today. I just didn't feel like it. I could hand myself an exemption, being as it was a weekend, but on the other hand, I missed out on biking a few times over the last few days due to the reworking of the sunroom into my new office. Instead I sat around eating my breakfast and laughing at Gaius Baltar.

In the next hour I got Nat up and moving for a meeting down at the Doubletree with our wedding planner and a Doubletree representative. At first it looked like Nat might not have been able to make it, but I was able to pep her up until she was ready to go. At the Doubletree, we did planning for things like our choices for meals and timing for our schedule. We also got to sample prospective cakes from the Bethel Bakery. We toured the reception suite and also visited the posh break room that we'll be renting also. It's gonna be sweet.

When we got home, Nat crashed for a while, and I embarked on doing some cleaning around here. I've been trying to bring some order back to not only the house, bu talso to my HDD. I discovered an entire month of photos that had been dumped in an odd folder separate and away from where I normally keep digital pictures. This would be an annoyance, but the folder contained all of the photos from Nat's spinal surgery and the month or two pursuant when we adopted Willow and went apartment shopping for our current place. I'll need to burn off a backup of my images soon.

I also ran DVDShrink to compact some DVDs that I'd backed up to the hard drive for Natty. I managed to even burn off a couple, so that will definately free up some major hard drive space.

While I've been blogging, I was watching my second C# video of the night. This guy has really ramped up the ridiculousity of the stuff that we're doing. The latest couple of videos included a lot more reliance on the automagic wizards, which allowed me to create SQL databases and interact with them via snappy Windows Forms that make me look like I understand a lot more of what's happening than I really do.

Anyway, today was a productive day, but there are goals that I am still striving for that I wish were finished already. Nat's becoming depressed from all of the adversity that she's running into from either her own body, or from her family in regards to the wedding. It's breaking my heart every time she starts crying over how large portions of the European contingents of her family won't likely make it to the wedding.

I'm back, I'm back. I screwed up. I shouldn't have taken so much time off from posting. I was moving my main computer, named Tom Servo by Nathalie, into the sunroom, which has become my new office. The geek room has become the new bedroom, sort of... Anyway, the Mac is now on the desk where Tommy was. The Mac's desk has been moved into the sunroom. Since I didn't want my main computer to be dealing with wireless issues, I wound up running 50 feet of ethernet cable down the hall. I didn't want to knock any holes in the wall of this 80 year old condo, unless I'm positive I need to do this. Aesthetically, the cable is very inconspicuous, but I still hate its presence.

Oh, I moved furniture around too. The geek room tv is now shoved into the corner.

Anyway, today was also occupied by replacing a busted spring on the hide-a-bed. We had to run out to Home Depot in order to grab odds and ends. At the end of the night, I allowed my tired self to play a little Sneak King on my new 360 :) I earned my first gamerpoints and have forever marked my Live account with evidence that I will play some of the most off-kilter games.

Anyway, I've been spending the last few days moving stuff around. I have no excuse for not blogging, because there were always a couple computers online. I have been neglecting C#, and need to get back on that horse. Hopefully this whole moving thing will make a decent cognitive break, and I'll fall back into this. Get on my case if I've not been programming.

Well, today wasn't productive on the intellectual side, but I managed to keep myself physically busy for about the whole day.

Biking went well in the morning, especially given that I felt like I'd gotten a good night of sleep finally.

Over the course of the day did several things: I emptied the cat boxes. Cleared the floors for vacuuming. Vacuumed the floors for the first time in too long, so I had to empty the cannister multiple times for best suction. Then after I was done, I went back through and covered the same floor again. The cannister's contents afterwards proved I'd made the right choice. After that I set things back to rights again. Then I disassembled the vacuum cleaner and scrubbed out the insides and washed out the filter. That was a mess.

I did a couple loads of laundry and folded it.

With some assistance from Natty, I cleared off the second desk in the geek room. This included disassembling the Mac with it's Wacom tablet. Then I partially disassembled the desk and moved it into the sunroom. Then I rearranged furniture in that side of the geek room. Moving the geek room TV required straightening out a total medusa snarl of cords for all of the game systems. Damned if that old CRT in the geek room isn't heavy beast.

A lot of the stuff today seemed to require doing things multiple times due to experimentation. I'm beat. I'll try to get back on the C# bandwagon tomorrow.

Today was another day short of sleep. I got up and rode the bike well, as usual of late. Then I had enough time to wrap up getting ready and then we were off to Panera for a meeting with our wedding planner and the florist. It ran from noon to about a quarter past two. We got a lot of good stuff done there, but it took a lot out of me, despite mass caffeination.

The rest of the day was crap, as I was in a fog. I picked up a little around the house and took out the trash, but not much else. We did run out to ship a few packages, and also went to the store.

I'm crashing, l8r. Hopefully tonight will be better than the last

Ugh, it's late again, and I don't feel like doing my blog. I spent a few hours tonight trying to compile a birthday wish list for Natty to use on me. I don't know how well it came together, but oh well...

The day got off to a poor start: slept poorly, slept in, no biking.

For a while, we went out to Target to buy a few things. Natty did alright

I watched the last three episodes of Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex.

Requested reciprocity setup with Wheeling Jesuit. This will allow me to utilize a local university's career facilities.

I burnt off several DVDs from the harddrive, and made some space.

We got the cats very high on catnip.

Enough, I'm crashing.

Today just never seemed to get going. I'm in a total fog at the moment, and it seems like I've been that way for hours. I'll pretend that it was the fault of poor sleep or something, I suppose. I barely made it through C# video lesson number seven, although that mostly b/s about namespaces. I completely didn't realize how late it'd gotten. I'd intended to give Dave a call, but I was too spacey.

I rocked the bike, as usual, this time I got to watch Battlestar Galactica though. Afterwards I putzed around the house and did some cleaning. I also finally used the breadmaker with the gluten-free bread mix, although Natty's no longer understood to be celiac, but hey, we had the mix sitting around. It made a nice hearty white bread.

I burned off some media to DVD, and compressed other stuff, but this got sidelined when I tried to rip the wonky DVD+R that we received from Nat's British relatives. It's a conversion of an old 8MM film of Natty as a baby. I think that there's a problem with the way that the movie was encoded though, and I don't mean that there's a region problem. DVD Decrypter works, but DVD Shrink chokes and dies on an error saying "Pack header not found". I surfed the net and got arcane advice about opening a VOB file in a hex editor and changing something. This is all mostly greek to me, as DVD file structure is just confusing. I managed to extract a track via AGK, but an attempt to get another resulted in the same damned track getting pulled. Oh well, at least I've created some redundancy.

Anyway, I'm all spacey, so I'm calling it a night. L8rz

Well today went alright. I got up an biked and did well over 400 calories. I'm so glad that the Battlestar Galactica DVDs arrived today though. I was getting pretty damned sick of biking with utter crap on the TV. It feels like a purgatory, instead of a good idea for my mornings.

So I had my appointment with Three Rivers Career Management today. It went well and it was very informative for me. They sound like a great place. They've got great services for helping you find that job that you want and grooming your resume and approach so that you'll get it. They'll even help you seed the field for prospective companies that don't have published notices, in hopes of being first in line whenever a position is next created. ...too bad that all of this is presupposed upon me having a target job in mind. I don't know what form of employment I want at this point, much less even the field that I'm interested in. 3RCM sounds like the exact kind of service that I want when I reach step 3, too bad I'm still on step 2. Regardless, they're going to work up a proposal for me to review, but I think it's not too likely that I'll pursue them. I think my next step will be taking a look at WJU's alumni career counseling servies. I might also try out a test like the Keirsey Temprament Sorter or the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator in order to give me some ideas.

I spent a couple of hours doing lesson 6, parts 1 and 2 from the Visual C# Express page. This one lesson took about as long as the 5 previous ones. It also covered a lot more in depth material, along with larger blocks of code appearing onscreen suddenly, via the magic of video editing. I had that thing paused several times totally at least a half hour, while I tried to accurately duplicate what was occurring. It's a bitch, because the videos work on three levels: Programming fundamentals, the C# language, and using the Visual C# Express program. The fundamentals are things I'm quite familiar with, but their implementations in the C# language are just slightly different enough from C++ language to require my close attention. Larger differences would probably be absorbed more quickly, because I wouldn't be getting caught up in inapplicable C++ instincts. With all of this going on though, I still have my SAMS 21 day book for learning C#, so I partly resent the depths to which I'm working here. Oof, oh well, I'm making headway, but I'm burnt for the night. L8rs

I started off the day with biking. I'm still breaking 400 calories in 15 minutes, but it's a lot harder to do if I don't have something good to occupy my mind while I do it. I still haven't received the latest Battlestar Galactica DVDs from Blockbuster, so I've been making due watching Homicide: Life on the Street reruns. It's okay, but not that great.

I took care of some wedding issues. I called the DJ and arranged for payment and contracts with him. I also printed out the photographer's contracts, but it looks like I'm not too certain about what we'd agreed upon verbally. *sigh* I might have to touch base with them again in order to get this crap straighted out.

I had a big fight with Nat while we were out for a bit. I've been kinda stressed all day, if not all week, because the latest round of fears is really pissing me off. Please don't take this paragraph out of place though, because it's not representing her POV at all, though. She's got her reasons, which I can respect, or at least put up with. I'm just so fucking tired of getting bushwhacked by stuff that I think she could have more than adequately been able to verbalize before shit reaches a crucial turning point. On the other hand, she's been on edge too. I dunno. I'll shut up now. I just wanted to vent, but I still love her.

I watched episodes 2, 3, 4 and 5 of the Visual C# Express videos. I toted up the numbers earlier, and there are a little over 8 hours of these videos, averaging at about 30 minutes each. Several clock in at only about 20 minutes, but that's offset by lesson 6 which is divided into one half hour and one 40 minute episode. Fun, eh? The difficulty with these videos is that they're designed for the novice at programming in general, so not only am I learning interesting stuff about how to navigate the confusing milleau of Visual Studio subwindows and utilizing the idiot-proofed WinForms generation, but I also am receiving redundant crap on how to initialize variables. Ugh, I crap initialized variables. Please!

On a developing kick, I also worked through this XNA tutorial. I applaud his efforts, but in the end, he's got a difference between his downloadable tutorial and the onscreen code. It kinda screws over the process, and although I found it interesting and all, I don't think that I learned a whole lot from it. I'm going to continue my combined diet of C# and XNA education in hopes of finding the good stuff. I'll find another new tutorial tomorrow.

Well, today's been a mixed bag. I'm personally not too happy with it, but I'd say that it rebounded towards the end.

First off, we originally had a doctor's appointment scheduled today. Nat was nervous because, due to her recent stomach-distress, her mental boundaries for travel have receded greatly. Where we were gadflying about Wheeling and Kittanning for the Xmas season, now I'm having trouble getting her out to Mount Lebanon again. *sigh* I tried my best to get her to go. I spent the morning in bed with her, doing my best to comfort her. I did my best to not leave her alone with her worries. I hoped that if I kept things cool, then she'd be alright with hitting the road, but no such luck. In the end, I got pissed because I'd put aside my entire morning for this.

Oh well, tomorrow we're off to Squirrel Hill, and Friday will have me downtown... although I don't know whether she'll be there for that or what... *sigh again*

After the disappointment, I tried doing some more touch-up work in the vestibule, but to much great aggrivation, the paint I used turned out to be some sort of mystery can of not quite the color of white that I needed. Tomorrow I'll dig through the cabinet and sort out the paint cans. I'm just mystified how we'd have another white aside from the bathroom primer, the bathroom topcoat, the ceiling paint for the living room and vestibule, and the white paint used for detailing in the living room and vestibule. *sigh* Oh, and I started painting the bare doorframe with the wrong color of white too, but luckily I stopped doing that... because I realized that I hadn't put any primer on! Again, a frustrating day.

As I've been typing, I've been watching a wonderfully dry video for learning MS Visual C# Express Edition. I'm watching this because I went out and bought a decent book for learning C#, but it unfortunately doesn't tell me a damned thing about using Microsoft's Visual Studio's project-based environment, which doesn't allow me to simply open a text file and then compile. The reason for my sudden interest in C# is because XNA Game Studio Express largely is just an add-on for Visual C# Express. So if I ever want to try and drop a game in on the Xbox 360, I've got to jump through a series of hoops. So for the moment, I'm watching the videos, so I can read the book for 21 days, so I can program games... or at least try to.

what a suck day. i was feeling more upbeat about it, until I started cataloging it

Okay, I've learned my lesson from yesterday's post: Start the blog entry early. Anyway, hopefully the lesson will stick with the earlier blogging.

(Brief pause while I turn off the lamp, as Nonami was trying to paw the bulb)

In a confusing turn, Nat's status now is that she doesn't suffer from Celiac disease. Nat's brought up the point that the blood-test results may have been tampered with by her gluten-free diet. On the other hand, she's also still seeing a lot of problems despite hacing ceased this, her recent stomach distemper for example. This round of stomach ailment panic and fears is still making life rough, but I got her out of the house today. I'm doing my best to keep her calm and preventing panic-driven recurrances, or else our ability to get out of the house will be hosed.

My sleep was a bit disrupted last night by night-fears, but I was still able to get up around 11 and get my biking in. I still don't have anything good to watch while I do it, but I'm still breaking 400 with ease.

I spent an hour or two trying to research the best way to run an ethernet cable through to the living room. I can handle having a little switch in there, but I'm not sure whether to drill to the outside and run the cable through the great outdoors, or whether I should try putting in a cable pass-through between rooms. There are fire code concerns: I'm not exactly sure of how to deal with them. I guess I'll have to put off getting my Xbox 360 all l33t3d up until I've figured out how to do it. This isn't my own house, and I've realized that I should probably CYA (Isn't it amazing the crap that's on Wikipedia?)

Using a little of my Xmas money, I picked up a SAMS 21-day course book on C# (the language for XNA). I'm going to work on doing this daily. I spent a little time this evening reading through the pre-amble.

We also dropped by Home Depot, where I picked up a few things for various home improvements and repairs.

I cooked up a nice dinner of meat sauce and pasta. It was delicious and there were leftovers

Anyway, today wasn't the most productive of days, but I've got something good going on now I think

We were up reaaaaal late last night, so waking up at a good time wasn't easy, but I still was up before noon. Too bad I didn't accomplish too much today.

I started on an XNA tutorial, but didn't get too far with it. I just wasn't able to concentrate. I can't just blame Nat. I freaking was reading Seanbaby's new write-ups on the SuperFriends, eventually.

Damn, I'm just tired and cranky at this point, so I'm not thinking too clearly. Nat's still panicky from her stomach distress, and that's wearing on me at this hour.

Odd note, Giant Eagle closed at 9 PM on New Year's Eve. The next day, instead of what you might expect, they actually opened at their usual early hour, but then they closed at 6 PM. 6 PM. Earlier than they did on the night where the party was happening in the evening...

Whatever, it's a holiday day, so hey, I rode the bike and took out the garbage. Good enough.

Happy New Year, folks!

I haven't got a lot to say about today. Last night was a very bad night for Nattie, after her indigestion. She woke us up several times. It kinda sucked and screwed up the day for me. I was pretty damned wasted today.

Anyway, I took the day off, basically. Talk to you next year!