Ben's Busy Blog

Biked this morning.

I surrendered to the buzz online and from Dave. Went out and picked up Puzzle Quest for the DS. Trading in two Marios for the DS along with Brain Training covered it with three dollars to spare. I decided to toss in a couple extra dollars to cover the $5 required to pre-order Phantom Hourglass.

We went over to AAA Motor Square Garden and got my new driver's license card. That didn't take as long, or cause as much trouble as I thought it could have.

When we returned home, we found that Nat's father had finally returned his wedding invitation. In the included note, he also mentioned that he'd like us to move out by June 30th. A pleasant man, completely lacking in class. Ugh, I don't need the stress, and neither does Nat. She spent some time surfing housing ads afterwards. We're going to also look into what it would take to buy our current place from the Donald. We came to a wise conclusion eventually that we'd talk with a financial planner before we made any sort of decisions. We've made an appointment for the week after the wedding.

I took some time flipping through Picasa in order to assemble a collection of headshots of myself. Then I went through them with Natty, discussing what to do with my hair for the wedding. I think I'm going to keep my bangs scissor-length, while buzzing the rest of my head. My sideburns are going to be trimmed back from the nigh-muttonchops I have now.

Since Natty still wanted to keep Hotel Dusk around, I didn't cancel my Gamefly membership. Instead I shipped out Ace Attorney 2 and just downsized my membership: a savings of about $15. Since I'll mostly be using GamezNFlix for Xbox 360 games, I decided to downgrade that for the moment. I went from 3 to 2 games, which only saved me $5, but I figured that simplifying life would be best.

Today got off to a slow start as I was a bit muzzy again. But eventually I dragged myself up on top of the bike and got my brain to start working. I don't think I've been sleeping well lately. As much as I'm not a fan of it, I think I might have to turn up the A/C in the bedroom since I've been waking up pretty sweaty. I've also been having some random dreams which I think are indicative of stress. There's nothing quite like dreaming about high school to suck the wind out of your sails.

Scrying aside, Nat and I went downtown today to apply for our marriage license. After a surprisingly thorough interview, Nat and I went for a walk around downtown. She even volunteered to walk up five flights of stairs in the parking garage. Then we came home and walked another mile or two down through Bloomfield! I'm really proud of her. Her feet and hip were really starting to get to her when we got home, but the girl's got her moxie back and more :D

I took a couple short Xbox breaks today to easily job some achievement points. 20 points for naming a pinata And 20 more for blowing out tires in Crackdown. Then I got sucked into Hexic again. Stupid me. Thankfully Nattie came through before I'd lost over an hour to the Xbox. I think I'm going to swear that game off for a while. Later in the evening I came back and got another easy 10 points from Castlevania. But damned if that doesn't leave me 5 points short of finishing that stupid damned Old Spice Challenge

I also looked over my situation with taxes. I'm doing alright, but the papers have gotten astray from my earlier organization. Blame that on wedding paperwork and rampant cats.

Nat and I looked over the photo list and song options for our wedding. We need to hammer that crap out with our vendors. We've got soooooo many stupid little decisions to knock out. Ugh.

I goofed around with Contact for almost an hour. I didn't mean to spend as much time working with it as I wound up doing so. The good result was that I proved that my damned game wasn't buggy. I just couldn't advance the plot without backtracking through one of the game's dungeons, discovering one particular secret passage, and utilizing a very poorly designed game mechanic that required me to juggle the d-pad, the stylus and the A button. *sigh* I'm done with this game. I'm decided on that.

I took a half hour messing around with my system's internet time settings, which refused to sync, and my smartphone, which upon synchronization would reset to an hour before the computer's time. Yes, I had the time zones worked out! The PC wasn't sync'ing with the MS time server because of something about the peer's stratum being wrong compared to the server's. It wouldn't take time.nist.gov either, but I found out about TOCK.USNO.NAVY.MIL which worked just fine. As for the PDA, I wound up uninstalling and reinstalling the MS fix, and that finally sorted the mess out.

Oh, and I think I'm going to be getting a job on or around April 28th. That's the loose target.

...so, did today's entry wind up being too verbose or what?

Oops, I couldn't post this last night, because Comcast decided to abruptly sever our connection around midnight last night. I farted around with the cable modem for a while, rebooting it several times futilely. Eventually I gave up and went to bed.

Anyway, as a brief post, yesterday was primarily dominated by driving Natty out to Mount Lebanon, where she met her sister at Le Pompanie... Le Pomponne... Le Pompane? A beauty salon! Ahem... where she had test makeup and hair styling done for the wedding day. She came out looking great and had a good time hanging out with her sister. As the wheelman though, I was unfortunately stranded for a good long while. After having a couple delicious slices of pizza from Mineo's I just strolled around Mt Lebo for a while.

Aside from that, I can't exactly recall what all I was up to yesterday. :-/ Oh well, I'm going to go work on today's post instead.

Having not learned from the convenience of yesterday, I'm doing my blog late aaaand... quick and dirty:

Biked. Took Nat to doctor's appointment. Took Nami to get her nails clipped. Sorted, washed and folded a couple loads of laundry. Prepped to load Windows on iMac.

The last few days haven't felt satisfying to me. I feel like I've been unfocused. Things are getting done for the wedding, but not so much that I feel justified about not having accomplished more in my personal life.

EDIT: oops, put the wrong day on here. Oh, and I also baked a loaf of raisin bread on Tuesday. It's been yummy

In order to avoid the type of sloppy posting I've done the last two nights, I'm going to actually post before I've one foot in bed. Well, I might not actually be able to fess up to doing that honestly tonight, as one could say that I've spent the entire day half under the covers.

Having gone to bed rather late last night, I woke up on the earlier side (for me) in order to take Nat to her 9:15 AM follow-up appointment with our GP. Unhappy about the missed sleep, Nattie asked me if the appointment really was that early, and not at 11:15 AM. It turns out that she was quite correct, and I was really wrong. The worst part was that the doctor didn't even arrive until 9:30 AM, and by then the office was filling up, so the odds of us getting in early were kaput. Nat was able to arrange for an appointment tomorrow though, so we just gave up eventually.

When we came home, we hit the hay. I went intending to only nap for an hour, but instead I entered a deep dozing sleep where I was unable to bestir myself upon the few occasions when I regained awareness of my environments. Even after getting out of bed at noon, I was still a mess. This went on for an hour or so, while I stumbled about unproductively.

Eventually I got my act together. Nat and I went down to the new Costco at the Waterfront for a long sojourn for supplies. Then we stopped by Macy's, home of our registry, for a few things.

I think I played the Xbox for a while when we got home. The rest of the evening is a bit fuzzy to me. I did manage to locate the bus company contract eventually, and I have dropped that in the mail with the requisite check. I also managed to finagle a hotel room for my brother at the original reduced price rates. LiquidBen was also due for renewal, and I did that as soon as I received the invoice.

I tried doing a little more physics research, and although I achieved some realization of how to handle collisions on a simple implementation, I don't have a lot of faculties available to me for determining how exactly to implement that tonight.

I think I'll go fudge around with the marker board for a little bit, and see if I have any insights, otherwise I'm just going to play Tomb Raider until my early bedtime. G'night

Another lame weekend post: Grandma's birthday and some studying of physics. On the non-achievement side: I played too much Xbox, but had a nice day out and about with Nattie

Quick and dirty: rewarded myself with a lot of Xbox time today. Also went out on a shopping trip to the Waterfront with Nat. She did well, as we were out for over 6 hours. I'd say that she's not only recovered, but is doing really well. BTW, we picked up some wedding stuff.

G'night!

NOTE: Hrm, I can't publish because my website seems to be offline for some reason.

I called one of Nat's doctors again today. Bastard's office doesn't even open on Friday, but I left another message anyway. His lazy-ass secretary is going to learn that if their answering machine is going to profess an interest in returning calls, then I'm damn well going to lean on their patience until I speak with somebody.

I need to get our fridge looked at by a pro. Water is still leaking down to pool beneath the crisper drawers. It seems to be condensed humidity, but I have no idea. I had to sop it up with rags and wring it out into a bucket. I haven't figured out a better way to get rid of it. Otherwise it'll eventually start coming out when we open the door. Ugh... Oh, and I cleaned off a few other surfaces in the fridge. Don't worry, I used antibacterial Windex, not the slop-water.

I studied vector math and physics a bit more today. While exploring that and XNA information, I discovered that, much to my displeasure, my concept for an XNA game was very similar to an existing game. One that actually was a finalist for the first round of XNA games. As it stands though, I believe that my game is sufficiently different as to be non-derivative. Furthermore, it would be a shame to cut bait on a project that has led me so far into learning XNA.

My sojourn into knowledge was cut short, as Natty needed to head on up to the correct David's Bridal location in order to have her dress re-fit. Much to her great pleasure, she's too small for it. Afterwards she treated me to lunch at Panera.

I goofed off with the Xbox for an hour or so, but then it was back to work. I re-vacuumed quickly through the hallway and dining room; garnering more debris for my thoroughness. Now it's extra clean, and I used the crevice tool to hit the edges and corners. Whoo... spring cleanin'

I also ran a few loads of laundry, which was complicated by the failure of multiple washing/drying units in the basement. One dryer was labeled as out of order, but then I went and found that the one washer was messed up too. It wouldn't start when I closed the lid, but if I pushed my finger into the hole for the trigger-plate, it would run. I jammed an odd piece of metal in there from the handyman's workbench, which worked well enough (at least until I had to fight to remove it later...) Unlike the average laundry day, folding didn't take forever, because Natty volunteered to help. She's real chipper since getting home... although if I said 'chipper' unironically in front of her, the wedding might be off :-p

I called my brother, the only person from whom we have not received an RSVP for our wedding. I got dinner orders for his family, but I also found out that he was late for getting a room at the good reservation rates. I wound up emailing my contact at the hotel to see if we can pull something off. I'll try leaning on them a bit in order to cut my brother a break.

A large portion of the evening got eaten up with sorting through mail and trying to get caught up on bills. Nat and I had deposited a few checks to the joint account while at the grocery store to cover expenses. While she made a big batch of chili, I made myself feel ill looking at money in and money out for both personal expenses and for the wedding. Finally I've paid off health insurance, photographers, cable, cell phone, credit cards, etc. It took some juggling, but I'm on top of most of it now. I think the only thing outstanding is the condo fee, but that's not due for another week or two.

Anyway, it's time to crash. I got a lot done today, but I really wish I'd spent more time playing Xbox. I really neglected that today :(

G'night

Today will be another quick wrap-up, because I'm tired, and I want to go to bed.

I got up early to clean, since I thought that our wedding planner with cat-allergies was due over here at 11AM. I was an hour early on that. I cleaned the office and living room for any remaining cat traces I could think of. I then killed an hour playing C:SotN for XBLA.

The wedding planner arrived around noon, and we had a beefy meeting that ran for over 1.5 hours. We covered a lot of territory. Looks like the wedding's on track.

Then I went back to cleaning, vacuuming the hell out the rest of the house. Nat fixed me a lunch, which I ate while watching the free HD "Good Times with Weapons" from Xbox Live. Then Ginger showed up and hung out with Nat for under an hour before we ran out to Monroeville around 3ish. They were getting fittings done for their wedding outfits. Then we had dinner out there too.

When we got back, Nat and I hit the grocery store for a little while. She bought a little cart for carrying groceries home in. We needed that.4

Came home and I lost a few hours to the Xbox, split between C:SotN and Hexic. Then I took out the trash and hung out with Nat for a bit. We did some planning for the tomorrow too.

All in all, it was a pretty productive day. Tired now, will crash.

Well, I'm back, having taken a long break while Nat was in the hospital. She's recovered now, and home for her first full day. I spent most of my nights at the hospital with her, so the blog was just out of the question. I spent my time there well though, acquainting myself quite well with XNA by beginning the programming of my own little 2D space shooter. It'll be published soon.

Now for a rough shotgunning of the day's events:
* Called Dr Dan (officiant)
* Called a few of Nat's doctors for follow-ups
* Called wedding planner, arranged appt for tomorrow
* Reviewed received wedding invitation replies with Nat and compiled reception dinner list
* Ordered Windows XP to setup dual-boot on the iMac, which shall become my official development machine
* Updated MS Office, ActiveSync and my smartphone finally, in order to bring it in line with the daylight savings change
* Spoke with my mother about a few wedding issues
* Cleaned the hell out of the couch, vacuuming & washing all surfaces and pillows
* Also cleaned the rest of the living room
* Picked up around the house in general
* Went out with Nat to grocery store
* Went out with Nat to pick up Cooking Mama for the Wii, much to her pleasure
* Watched Casino Royale, a great movie, although perhaps not exactly a Bond movie... a new species of Bond, perhaps.

Insert despairing lament here, colour with exhaustion.

Another quick blog entry... I've been sitting with Nat for a while. We've had a few heated arguements today. Lots of stress. I did bike. I also worked on programming at Riemers, but the HLSL crap is hard to grok. I played Crackdown for a long while, trying to relax after fighting with Nat. Also ran to store by self and picked up an assload of stuff. Woo... G'night

I don't get enough sleep. I really wish I did, because it affects my quality of life. I think that it's a big part of my lack of concentration. I still need to get better at not websurfing so much.

I biked this morning, despite feeling tired. The way I look at it, if I'm just tired, then I should bike. If I feel like I might be ill... well, then I might give myself a pass depending on how badly off I feel.

I programmed a bit at Riemers. I tried to do a little separate research on just what exactly vertex and pixel shaders are. It's confusing because a shader does not just affect color or even texturing, but it can also can alter the actual position of the damned thing. Or maybe only vertex shaders can. It seems like nobody can give a good straight answer. I think it's one of those problems where the pros just ignore the nomenclature issue, and the rest of us don't know enough to ask. Confusion aside, all of this stuff has to do with the fact that the third tutorial is going to be very heavy into explaining HLSL, which is a way to communicate with your graphics card. Citing Visual C# Express's textpad level support of HLSL, Riemer recommends you install Nvidia's FX Composer IDE for programming in. I felt a little dubious at first, but apparently it possesses an autocomplete function, so I took the dive.

I played Crackdown online with Dave. We played on the earlier side, which left the evening open. Here I am tired, and not getting much done though. I did wind up sitting with Nat for a while though, because she was sick again. *sigh* I just don't know what to do, but I'm going to make another appointment for her tomorrow.

In review, I did a bit of things today, but not as much as I would have liked. I have a vague feeling that I sat with Natty for a while, but I can't blame my lack of productivity on her. Well, I'm going to try to sift through a little more info at Riemers

Well, another day has passed without me trying to do any creative writing and finishing the setup of that blog. I did use my time somewhat wisely otherwise, but I really need to make sure to prioritize this.

Anyway, when I woke this morning, I had a sinus headache and felt generally crappy, so I skipped riding the bike. Over the course of the day, I ran through a few more XNA chapters at Riemer's and graduated to the third tutorial. I'm feeling a lot more confident about my abilities to program as I progress here. The temptation to stop following the tutorials and to start fooling around on my own is growing, but I think if I manage to stick to the lessons, I'll be even better armed for creating my own stuff.

I also went online and paid a few bills, both personal and for the house. I posted an ad on Craigslist to get rid of the two useless subwoofers we have. One's broken and the other's a POS that doesn't connect to anything but two copper endings. I posted them up for free, figuring that I'd just ditch both of them to make space around here. I've got other stuff that I'm looking to sell for a pittance. These just didn't seem worth it.

Oh, and I did a little more shopping online for Natty's birthday, and I made one heck of a deal. I finagled a piece of merchandise that isn't actually available publicly yet :-D I are so smarts! w00tZ!

Oh, and I did some wedding stuff. I need to get the rehearsal dinner info assembled for Mom. I also touched base with the wedding planner. Hopefully she can get that all straightened out.

Oh, and Dave and I played Crackdown co-op again. That game's a helluva drug, to quote Rick James, bitch!