Ben's Busy Blog

Today's will be short. I feel like I accomplished more today, but isn't showing in the terse verse here. Got up at a decent time. Biked. Worked on XNA programming. Put the crappy subwoofers up on Craigslist. Bought some birthday presents for Nattie online. Sat with Nattie for a while. Played Crackdown for a couple hours at the end of the night.

Today I strove towards getting my life back in line. I had some achievements, but not as many as I would like. I think I'm having a lot of trouble operating efficiently due to concentration issues pursuant from lack of sleep. Also, I don't do well at the mental accounting to track how much time I wind up spending with Natty.

Anyway, I got up earlier and biked. Broke 400 calories in 15 minutes, and am too tired to look up the specifics.

Later in the evening here, I baked a loaf of two cheese bread. I twiddled with the recipe a bit, and I'm not quite sure whether I'm satisfied with the results yet. Any failures here are accounted for by my additions though, not by any potential deficiencies in the original recipe.

I ran around earlier and did some shopping. I managed to drop Nat's ATM card at the grocery store, and when I returned later in search of it, they wouldn't give it to me. Nat will have to appear herself.

Slowly, I did a round of Riemer's XNA tutorials. Also, last night I found Ziggyware, which apparently has a good lively XNA community. I think I'll try to keep my eyes on that. There are a lot of people feeding tools back into the community apparently.

Oh, and I realized how much I've been distracted by all that's going on. Nat's birthday is coming up really fast. I spent a little time on Amazon looking up presents for Natty.

Oh, and I wasted an hour or so earlier playing in Photoshop. I highly approve of Brad Sucks and his free for download debut album "I Don't Know What I'm Doing". He released the source from all of his stuff for open remixing, and after a while he compiled his favorite remixes into a remix album playlist. I've got a few from there that I liked, so decided to fill in its gap in iTunes with a little album art of my own

Well, there's no bones about it: life has kinda sucked since Nat has been feeling ill the last few days. It's not entirely her fault, but I won't go into details that it's not my place to divulge.

On the other hand, I think I've been rather weak willed. Perhaps it's because I've been spending a lot of time playing Crackdown each evening with Dave though. I don't know, but I haven't taken the time to finish my initial story for the creative blog. Also, I've gotten really slow at doing XNA tutorials. I did a few rounds tonight at Riemers and now I've got a working crappy flight sim thingy going on there. Hopefully that'll lead somewhere for me.

Anyway, I'm tired and Natty probably needs me. G'night

Today was an off day. It went very poorly for Nat, for reasons that aren't her fault. I coped by being a complete loser and playing Tony Hawk Project 8 all day. It goes back tomorrow, so it will no longer plague me. I'm just pissed at that thing now anyway.

Today's significant achievement was getting the tuxedo's taken care of for the wedding. Now I just need to set people up with the contact information. I also biked earlier in the day.

On the bum side, Nat was in a poor way when we got home. It was a while before she was able to fall asleep. I was hanging out with her for a good long while.

Then to blow off steam, I wound up playing a lot of Xbox 360. I played Tony Hawk for a while, and then I played Crackdown with Dave for a few hours. Not my most productive day. *sigh*

I also cleaned up around the house for a while this morning, but not a lot. I was just slow getting going after the previous night's Crackdown binge kept me up late.

Last night, sleep was crappy, but I managed to get up earlier. I had trouble falling asleep due to anxiety about various things.

I biked for 418 calories in 15 minutes, eleven seconds.

I finished taking out trash.

I contacted condo association about late payment message. Apparently we need to get caught up.

Contacted coach company about renting a minibus for the wedding. They're sending out a contract.

Cleaned up my desk. Found a gift card in the process and looked up the balance for it.

Started a duplicate file finder on an exhaustive search for potential duplicate MP3 tracks. After scanning results to make sure that it didn't kill anything good, I deleted 2 GB of redundant MP3s.

Started filling out my taxes online. Ugh.

Drove up to Kittanning with Natty and we bought our wedding rings! This took a few hours. We got a great deal on it.

Came home, played Crackdown with Dave for a few hours

Ran to store solo, and to Blockbuster

Did two tut's at Riemers

Played more Crackdown

Biked while watching Battlestar Galactica

Started cleaning the house a bit. I bagged some trash and put out on the deck for later taking down to the dumpster. Then I started in on the litter boxes when I was interrupted by the arrival of the alarm repairman.

Perhaps it was ironic, but when I let the repairman in, the latch on the front door broke. I tried shutting the door, but the tongue wouldn't retract. After fiddling with the knob and lock for a moment, I shrugged and just tried slamming the door to break it loose. In retrospect, this was probably the wrong decision. Either way though, the door wouldn't open again. Slightly dismayed, I let the repairman do his trick, as I went to work disassembling my first doorknob. Further surgery on the door resulted in a small scrap of broken metal falling out. It was at this point that I realized that I was trapped in my own apartment. I had to break out of my freaking apartment!

Well, that's a little over-dramatic. The back door was perfectly serviceable, but it leads out onto the alley, requiring a long circuitous route to get back to the front. Anyway, I managed to break it down to nothing but the latch, having let the outer doorknob simply fall to the floor in the outer hall. It didn't matter how much I manually manipulated the guts of the thing though, I couldn't get the tongue to retract. I think that the lost fragment had actually been the end of the tongue, and that now there was nothing to grasp in order to pull the damned thing out. It took me a while to figure out how to break the damned thing loose. I had to take the alarm repairman out the back door before coming back to finish removing the damned latch. Finally I was able to jimmy the thing free using a spackling knife with a curved edge along with a lot of body english.

Of course removing the damned lock was only half the adventure. Then I had to run over to Home Depot and get a replacement. Since I didn't want more keys, I decided to get the set with a matching deadbolt. Installing that stuff took a while, but I got done in time to sit with Nat for a little while before we needed to leave for her doctor's appointment.

Unfortunately, we were only a fifteen minutes down the road before we had to turn around and come back, much to my great frustration. At least I was able broker a stop at EB Games in order to pick up Crackdown. As means of some appeasement, Nat bought me a footlong at Subway, which I ate while watching the rest of my Battlestar Galactica episode. Afterwards, I hopped into Crackdown co-op with Dave for a few hours. That was a lot of fun.

I had to quit Crackdown eventually though, as Nat's nerves were still shot. Things got a little tense, so I tried to improve the situation by hooking up the VCR so we could watch the AbFab tape that she'd gotten. Unfortunately I got pissed at the wiring problems and we just wound up having a bigger fight. After a while we made up and watched the episode.

So anyway, now the day's ending, and I haven't accomplished anything that I would have planned for the damned day. I did learn a bit about installing locks, which is useful, but not something you do too often.

rose late due to getting my sleep disrupted again

shortly after waking, took nat to doctor's appointment

On return, made late lunch and started watching American Splendor. I only intended to watch a little of it, but found myself enjoying the movie so much that I watched the entire thing. Although not as inspiring as Wonder Boys was for my creative muscle, this still made me want to lay pen to paper.

Before I could start programming though, Nat decided that she was ready to go out again. We ran over to EB, where I reserved Crackdown, per my blood pact with Dave. I also picked up the charger kit for my wireless controller, since Crackdown had mostly been covered by various gift cards that I was emptying.

After we got back, we went grocery shopping for a while. After returning home, putting away the groceries, and feeding the cats, I went back out with the gas can to top off the car's tank. Then I ran over to Blockbuster to drop off some movies and pick up some others, along with Tony Hawk Project 8 for the 360.

When I got back in, I had intended to empty the dishwasher and take out the trash, but I realized I was famished, having neglected to have any dinner. I whipped up a small meal to remedy this. Afterwards it felt like it was too late to assay the dark and icy back steps while lugging garbage around, but I still emptied the dishwasher.

Then I sat myself down at the computer and programmed. Having spent a little time earlier skimming Riemer's code, I realized that what had seemed simple - moving the camera - was actually going to be rather difficult. It turns out that instead of moving the camera, Riemer's rotating the whole damned worldspace apparently. Maybe this is how it's done, maybe this is just something for an early tutorial. Feeling rather flummoxed on how to proceed, I changed plans and tackled Riemer's second set of tutorials. I got through the third step, before it came up to 11 PM.

At this point, I decided to lay in a first draft of my blog, after which I would give Dave a call while playing Tony Hawk Project 8. Too bad Dave never answered. I played Tony Hawk for a while, garnering a few more meager points for my Gamerscore.

Today was a mixed bag.

I got up feeling crusty, so I skipped out on riding the bike. That might not have been the greatest idea, but later I did go out and shovel snow for a little while. That doesn't completely offset, but at least I wasn't completely limp.

I also finished watching Wonder Boys. I really enjoyed the hell out of this movie. It was fun watching Pittsburgh through the director's eyes as he told the story. When I watched the special feature for their filming scenes around town though, it made me feel kinda depressed, as it gave a sense of Pittsburgh as a fallen city. Either way though, I'm definitely inspired to go out and buy the book.

That's not all that it inspired me to do. I finally got started setting up my "Scratchpad" for flexing my creative muscle. It was relatively easy to do, but I haven't completely set it up. I couldn't link to it from my other pages just yet, because Blogger can't generate the default page without anything to post. Refusing to post some testing crap to get it started, I actually got to work writing a short story. For inspiration, I went to Google Image Search and just searched for "Random Image". I sifted through the stuff available and found this picture. I've got about 500 words down, but haven't had quiet time to sit back down with it.

Oh, and I finally sold our old TV via Craigslist. Since the buyer was a smaller woman, I wound up just carrying the whole damned thing myself down the stairs. It was an effort, but it was worth it to get rid of the thing. And it's a bit more exercise for me. Oh, and as another sign that I should buy Wonder Boys, she's an English professor at Pitt.

Amongst gaming with Dave and sitting with Natty, I also spent some time going over XNA programming. I've given myself an assignment to extend Riemer's first tutorial. I'm trying to implement two more things: 1) Adding more camera control, which should be somewhat straightforward and 2) Changing the way that the program loads image data per a forum discussion on the site, which could be really hard. On the other hand, it's something that Riemer himself was talking about going back and changing his tutorials in order to use this more recommended method. If I can manage to do it first, it'll be really awesome to hand something back to the guy who's teaching me a lot. A real ego boost. On the other hand, I could be trying to do this before I'm savvy enough to really figure it out. I figure that if I get too stuck, I'll just go back and get into the second tutorial.

While I write this, I'm kinda cheaply jobbing it at Hexic on Xbox Live Arcade. I've gotten to the point where I'm really good at the game, and I only lack a few more achievements. One of the achievements is for playing 100 games, but I've gotten good enough that if I'm playing, a game can last at least 20 minutes. There's no way I'm playing this game for days straight in order to reach 100 games, so I'm playing to lose... I feel a little cheap, but the achievement is just designed poorly. Besides, I've already gotten all but what are reputably the some of the most difficult achievements on the system. Even with gaming the system though, it takes a minute for each game (50 seconds plus overhead), so it'll still take an hour at least, so I'd hardly say I've taken any real shortcut.

In the end, I feel cleverer at the end of the day, but I want to have more stuff to show for it. Oh, and I need to pick up a copy of Wonder Boys

***LATE UPDATE (1:30 AM)***
I wound up staying up late tinkering with XNA and I was able to implement the pipeline code change! Yeah, I was handed a lot of the code, but I've still proudly posted up my results at Riemer's forum. Oh, and I'm still nowhere near being done "cheating" at Hexic. The longer this is taking, the less cheap I feel...

Today I finished watching the Cowboy Bebop movie. I watched more of Wonder Boys. I played Crackdown online with Dave for a few hours. I hosted a video chat with Dave so Natty could see his cat. I played more Xbox after signing off with Dave. I sat with Natty for a while because she was nervous

I basically binged today. I'm going to try to look at this optimistically as getting some shit out of my system, as the sleeping interuptions are hopefully dying down.

Woke up late due to messed up sleep schedule. Biked 400 cals in 15 mins. Finished Riemers first round of tutorials. Baked bread. Went to grocery store and other errands. Sat with Nattie for a while. Was kinda messed up again by lack of sleep/weird sleep schedule.

Stayed up really late playing Xbox Live with Dave.

Today was another day plagued by poor sleep interrupted by Nat. On the plus side, I got a few things posted on Craigslist for sale. So far there's been a lot of interest in the TV, but the Sirius Satellite radio receiver isn't moving. I think everyone else feels the same lack of interest that I have for it.

I got Natty out of the house today for her dress fitting. We were out of the house for a few hours and I got in to the tux shop.

All in all, I'm goddamned tired again. I didn't program. I played Half Life 2 for about an hour, but I don't know where the rest of my time went. I'm so freaking out of it. If this keeps happening, I'll have to enforce nap-taking for myself - something I usually dislike and avoid.

Today was another miserable day for sleeping. Quite frankly, I'm completely bollocks'd, at least at this point of the night.

The original plan for today was for two doctor's appointments. The ice storm put an end to that. This was alright, because I'd gotten nowhere close to the sleep necessary for gallivanting about on a sheet of ice.

I started my own day at about 1PM. I'd been awake on and off several times earlier though.

My concentration's been crap. I've done some programming today. I did a few pages at Riemers. It's been a long slow slog.

Last night I didn't sleep too well. Nat was suffering from stomach anxieties intermittently during the night. I wound up getting up with her a few times to comfort her.

I did the monthly account check-up and paid all of our bills that were available online. One still requires dead tree processing.

At one point, I took a cookie tray outside and filled it with snow for the cats. Unfortunately, they were completely unimpressed by it.

I sorted and ran four loads of laundry, then folded and put it all away. This always takes a while. I also packed up the remaining Xmas things, labeled the boxes and put them into storage. I ran at least 8 round trips between the apartment and the basement, which means I went up and down a 16 floor building for that alone.

Later, Nat noted how much snow had piled up on the sidewalk in front of our building so we got the idea to go out and shovel the walks. I shoveled while Nat sprinkled salt. I shoveled the walks for both of the buildings and the sidewalk in front. I did two shovel-widths for most of it, but the other building only got one shovel-width. I left the shovel in their lobby. They can do more if they want.

Dave and I set up an Xbox Live video chat, allowing Natty to see baby Linky doing his kitten thang. This made my Natty inordinately happy. Over the entirety of the day, I kept on trying to sign up for the Xbox Rewards program. It was rather irritating, but I'm finally on. I wound up chatting with Dave online and playing Xbox for a few hours, racking up some easy points.

I didn't program today, nor did I ride the bike. I made up for the biking in other efforts, but I have no excuse for not programming. Nat and I have two doctor's appointments to hit tomorrow, but I'm going to make sure that I program at least a Riemer's tutorial before I touch the Xbox or watch a DVD.

As the last few days have been, so today was, with Nat nervous and needing comforting. This has taken up a lot of time, affecting sleep hours and interfering with a lot of projects.

I'm still ailing on the bike. I think it's because I got up early today. Either way, I still got my 400 calories in 15 minutes.

I got my oil changed today at a Pennzoil 10 Minute Oil Change shop. I like them. They do good work quickly and they don't try to push too much crap on you like Jiffy Lube, where the spokesperson is always running up a sale. I get less upsale on a system purchase at EB, dammit.

I also set up a doctor's appointment and a wedding dress fitting for Nat. I also set up an appointment with a technician to drop by and check out some wiring for some appliances.

Oh, and the Xmas tree came down. Living room furniture was moved around to its original positions. I haven't put all of the books back on the bookshelf since moving it yet, but that's partly because I want to make sure that the order of the books isn't an OCD thing for Nat.

I didn't program today. I don't know how I forgot... :-(

Today's big event was having Nat's mother and sister over, along with her mother's friend. This necessitated the house finally getting the clean-up that I'd wanted for so long. It was a lot more sleight-of-hand than actual cleaning, but still, I'm somewhat relieved. Floors are vacuumed. I got Nat to clean the hell out of the bathroom.

We woke up earlier today, which was a good thing. On the other hand, we didn't go to bed earlier, so I was a bit spent. Still half asleep, I biked crappily again. I barely made 400 calories in 15 minutes.

Anyway, I'm off to watch Wonder Boys with Nat. Hopefully tomorrow will be productive. And hopefully I'll figure out what it is that I'm working towards.

So this is going to be just about the fastest blog entry ever. I biked this morning, poorly, for just over 400 cals in 15 mins. This was partly because Nat woke us up pretty early thinking that she was going to be sick again. She wasn't, but it abrogated an hour of my sleep. Since then the majority of the day was spent motivating Nat. I did well and got her out of the house twice, and she made chili. I have no clue what I did. I spoke with the wedding planner at length, and called a couple tuxedo places. Aside from that, I have no clue where my mind was. It's rough. Oh well. Time for bed.

Yeah, today was crap also. Nat had a bout of retching again this morning. I piddled about and managed a few minor tasks, but in general, I just couldn't bring myself to succeed at much of anything. Perhaps I'm being a bit rough on myself there though. I just seem to have spent a good deal of time either comforting or confronting her. I have no strategy for getting us out of this situation, and I refuse to wait on providence.

...I just wish I had a clue of how to get things going right. I can't seem to get Nat's head in the game, and I can't see how pull it off without her.

After the last few days, today was understandably a bit laid back.

I watched the end of Mrs. Brown with Nattie. It was definitely a quality movie. Produced by the BBC, it felt like you would have gotten more out of it were you already a familiar with the subject matter, but at the same time it was still quite an enjoyable art-house historical fiction.

After that, we embarked on the beginning of Running With Scissors. Having heard that there was some rather freaky things in it, I found that they'd rendered it mostly charming. It falls a little flat, which I suppose is why it didn't garner much appreciation.

I also tried baking a loaf of Anadama bread using a recipe that came with the breadmaker. Since I couldn't get any straight gluten at the grocery store, I tried substituting with the xanthan gum that we had on hand. Unfortunately, I used it as a 1:1 substitution. Not a good idea. My hearty Anadama loaf came out half-sized, so it's heartiness is doubled. It's still edible, but quite filling, and probably good for your colon...

Oh, anyway, I also biked and cleaned the house a bit. Anyway, I'm off to an early retirement to watch a little more Running with Scissors with Nattie.

In a burst of prescient energy yesterday, I tapped out a brief review of today's schedule. Suffice to say that all went well in that it all was eventually accomplished. There was fighting. There was stress. But it got done.

There were plenty of complications. The doctor's appointment took forever and was rough on our poor traveler, but in the end, good medicine was done for my dermis. The primary target for replacing my car tire was booked solid, so a secondary target was chosen and resolved the issue expediently, much to my relief. Our poor traveler was propelled and compelled to join me for the suit fitting, but their stressful anxiety nigh broke my back. Mom and Rich were about as pleased to be there as cats drug backwards, but everyone made nice tiredly. A suit was bought with a minimum of faux pas from me.

We got home safe. I ran to the store in two trips. I loaded the dishwasher and cleaned out the cat fountain. Nat's sacked out from earlier travails.

Today was no fun, and in fact, sucked.

Setup: My birthday present from mother and stepdad is a new suit. Sick Grandmother rendered mother worried. Stepdad ordered to procure suit immediately, unspokenly in case of funeral. Stepdad wearily arranged suit fitting appointment with him and myself at his sartorial connection. Anxiety suffering fiance won't be left alone, but her recent gastrointestinal distress and resultant fear cause a travel dilemma.

Execution: Nervous fiance with worried stomach slept poorly, making bestirring difficult and disembarking stressful. 11 degree Fahrenheit weather chilled to the bone. Flat tire stopped trip dead. Stepdad's cell phone wouldn't answer. 11 degree Fahrenheit weather chilled to the bone. Cheap jack won't lift car. Handle detaches and scars car door. 11 degree Fahrenheit weather chilled to the bone; Loud cursing warms the blood. Car finally lifted, lugnuts removed cleanly. Wheel won't dismount despite cursing and forcing. AAA membership was forgotten and unpaid. 11 degree Fahrenheit weather chilled to the bone. AAA membership paid over phone. Amidst offering details of accident, the cold kills the phone battery prematurely. 11 degree Fahrenheit weather chilled to the bone; Loud cursing warms the blood! Fiance huddled in car offers her phone. AAA may take 1.5 hours. Waiting in car. Stepdad's phone won't answer. Towtruck arrives. Replaces cheap jack with professional one and slides under car. BANG BANG BANG! Dust flies and the wheel comes loose. 11 degree Fahrenheit weather chilled to the bone. Professional departs and the donut is affixed.

Aftermath part 1: Mother calls. Stepdad called her. He forgot his phone. He called her. She didn't answer. He called her again. She didn't answer. He called her again. She answered and was yelled at. She called me. She's angry at me. I'm angry, but soup is warming. I explain that the tire was flat, and 11 degree Fahrenheit weather chilled to the bone. She's angry, but at herself.

Aftermath part 2: I have an extra tire to replace the fallen. Anxiety suffering fiance won't be left alone, but her recent gastrointestinal distress and resultant fear cause a travel dilemma. I can't get my tire replaced today.

Aftermath part 3: Weary mother calls weary me. Stepdad calmed now, will congregate at sartorial connection at 5:30 tomorrow. Fiance's doctor's appointment conflicts with this, but I cancel it to appease family. I manage to change suit fitting to 5PM, in order to avoid the worst of rush hour traffic, but this comes with umbrage.

I fear for the next day. I have a doctor's appointment of my own in the morning. Then I must get tire replaced in order to travel highway to suit fitting. Will be traveling near rush hour. Anxiety suffering fiance won't be left alone, but her recent gastrointestinal distress and resultant fear cause a travel dilemma.

Fuck me.

So yesterday was another off day. Overcome with torpor, I decided that I'd earned the three day weekend, and could afford to play catch-up today.

...then this morning I awoke to the sound of Nat retching. Digestive expulsion being her greatest phobia, my day has been rendered inert. I've stayed on hand with her, comforting her to the best of my ability. I haven't been as successful as I would have liked.

Anyway, I did a few housekeeping things, but it wasn't a productive day on the thinky front, as I felt rather burned out. Hopefully tomorrow will go better.

Woof. Today I am tired and fatigued. I didn't keep track of the time much last night, but I stayed up a bit late goofing around. I guess it was a birthday thing.

Having not accomplished much so far, I fielded a call from my mother. She was calling from the hospital where Grandma is staying. From what had originally been passed off as semi-routine pneumonia monitoring, it sounds like things are a bit more difficult. Grandma's very... proactive. This morning she got up and changed clothes back into her civvies, which involved her removing her mandatory heart monitor. Needless to say, the nurses were none too thrilled. Since then she's tried to slip the loop a couple more times. Once she overflowed the sink in her room. When Mom called me, she lay on the motherly guilt to get me to come visit. On the phone, she made it sound like I would be doing it for Grandma's sake, but inside I knew that I really needed to do it for Mom. While we were there, we had to leave the room a couple of times while IV's were hooked up or blood was drawn, and during these breaks Mom would take Nat and I down the hallway to talk for a bit. Her composure never cracked one bit, but I think that she really needed someone to listen to the stuff that she'd been putting up with.

Of course Mom's story wasn't all that was going on. Nat's nerves have been rather poor of late, and I didn't expect her to so vehemently agree to going up to visit, but she explained that she was compelled by thoughts of how she'd feel in the situation. She has a lot of loyalty and devotion for her grandparents, and I really respect that. I need to make sure that we get to Scotland this year to see them again. Nat pushed through today, and she's pushed through a lot of things. Nothing ails her more than knowing that she has family that won't drive her crazy, family that cares, but they're on the other side of the Atlantic. ...it's a bitch.

I feel sort of watered down and worn out, but as I write this part of the update, it's only 9:30 PM. I think I'm going to take it easy for the rest of the night. It's a little odd to throw my cares to the wind for two days in a row, but I just feel pensive. I need a little time to myself after the family matters of the day.

I DID NOTHING TODAY! MWAHAHAHAH!! Happy birthday to me! :)

Biked 428 calories in 15 minutes.

Fielded long call from florist, declaring lots of things

Email correspondence with liaison from Doubletree. Check for latest payment was overdue (oops). Also she wants a swatch of proper shade of chartreuse for Bethel Bakery. I asked about vegetarian meals, as it turns out one of our guests has given up meat. She told me that could be worked out once we know how many we'll need. I also checked on a piano, since Nat's friend Shea is going to be playing a piece while her best friend and maid of honor, Ginger, will sing. Unfortunately, it looks like we're going to have to provide our own ivories to tickle.

Nat bust out an early birthday present: the Half Life 2 Holiday pack. I played that for a bit, and it owned up to everything I would have dreamed of. It feels just as good as the first one, and it sucked me in for a few hours.

I eventually broke away and had some dinner. But instead of getting to work, I watched a Venture Bros episode while eating.

After all this goofing off, I finally started working on my coding for the day. I finished the uninteresting chapter 9 and started in on chapter 10 of My C# book.

I got sidetracked and signed up for Amazon's referral program... so... um, those links are there. *shrugs* I figured I'd give it a whirl, but only link stuff that heartily approve of. I'm quite happy with the stuff linked so far, but shilling takes too much time, so I'll likely not do it toooooo much.

I worked some more on day 10 from the C# book. It was a really slow slog through a lot of material that I've never really dealt with before. I'm realizing at this point that I may not get caught up on this. I might not even be able to do my studies at Riemers alongside this, just because there's just too much dense information to wade through. At the same time, I reaaaaally want to get through those XNA tutorials, because I've been trying to write pseudocode for XNA.

Anyway, it's now past midnight, and it's my birthday. So I'm calling it a night. L8r fools! Happy Groundhog Birthday to me!

I'm a bit tired today, so I'm going to wrap it up short. I woke up stiff this morning and decided against riding the bike. I do well enough at that. On the other hand, I do need to remember to get down to the weight room.

Most of the day was dominated by dread of an early evening doctor's appointment for Natty. I didn't get a lot done. Just most of a C# chapter, and some bills. After we finally got home, it was late and I just unwound for most of the evening. Tomorrow is a new day unburdened by appointments though, so hopefully I'll be able to get caught up... again.