Ben's Busy Blog

Today's been kind of a wonky day. Good news is that I might have a very promising job prospect. We'll have to wait and see how it pans out. Nat and I went out for a walk and wound up trapped in the UPMC Shadyside parking garage for an hour, when a sudden cloudburst opened up (despite Accuweather's assurance that it was just cloudy). I didn't ride this morning, suffering from poor spotty sleep. Natty played a bit of LOTRO, and I coached her for a bit. I emptied an extra box we had sitting around and loaded some books into it. The decaying mat in the bathroom was disposed of, and I did another round of scraping the bathroom floor. I got it mostly clean before I just decided to drop the new mat in its place. It just wasn't worth the further effort. I also called our financial analyst, trying to work out the current status of the funds that I'm moving. I spent some time trying to figure out how to turn my modded Xbox into a file server. It looks like it's doable, but it'll be at the cost of losing my XBMC. Considering that I don't really use it, I shouldn't mind, I guess.

I think that the news of the job lead, atop the bad sleep, just derailed the day. I was having trouble focusing, and then I found out that I might have finally found the neat downtown resolution for my job search. I think it gave me a bit more of a sense of achievement than I would have garnered otherwise.

Today was a slow start. I'd gotten to bed at a better time, but then promptly ruined it with merriment.

Groggy despite the bike ride, I got caught up reading Day Watch for a while. After I got through that, it was time to apply for jobs again. Thanks to Manpower's odd insistence, I recompiled a text edition of my resume. Yeah, that doesn't make me feel confident about getting my resume seen by human eyes. I had left that one over from yesterday, and aside from that, Monster didn't have any new postings. The Pittsburgh Technology Council came up dry too. I had a blind bland blank of a hello email from a recruiter, so I replied to that as best as possible. We'll see where that pans out. I'm just happy in that I think I've crafted a good cover letter to use as a reference. I know better than to fall into the traps of copy/pasting what I've done before, but a good cover letter is like a jazz piece. There's definitely a lot of improv, but there are these essential notes that you must hit.

I also emailed the property management company for our new loft. Of all stupid silly things, I can't seem to suss out what our new address is going to be. Also, I don't know what visiting friends are to do with their cars. The area up there's a bit devoid of opportunity.

Nat had a doctor's appointment, 45 minutes to an hour away, depending on traffic. Today's appointment required driving through rush-hour traffic, so more like hour and ten minutes. Then an hour-long appointment, followed by the drive back.

After we got back, we stepped out again rather soon. We went for our 2.3 mile walk, stopping so I could grab some dinner using a near-expiry coupon for a free sandwich. After we got home, I putzed around for a bit aimlessly. Then I worked on some more vector math. I played LOTRO for an hour, while on the phone with Dave. I'm happy that I'm sticking pretty closely to my hour goals, but I haven't been keeping it strictly so far. I'm not sure what to say about that. I can handle a little fuzziness, but I don't want to end up waaaay overstaying my gaming time.

After that I sopped up more water leakage from the fridge's condenser. There's one thing I won't miss after we move out. I tried cleaning up the breadmaker so we could pack it, but as usual dried bread has made it impossible to just pull the paddle out of it. I've set that to soak. The entire time I was in the kitchen, little Nonami waited patiently. She's gotten very good at meowing, now that she's in love with rotisserie chicken lunch meat.

Anyway, it's time for bed. Much love to all.

Today was work-on-getting-a-job day, so it sucked.

I worked on resume submissions at the Pgh Tech Council's career site. Later on, I completely revamped my resume on Monster... throwing up a little in my mouth as I did it. I hate hate hate job searching. I feel like the new kid on a rough playground full of mean-looking big kids. Nothing makes me feel more insecure. And nobody seems to be willing or able to offer the support I feel I need to deal with this stress. I just wish it were over already. I'd be having a better time discovering that my digestive tract was necrotizing.

I had 3 games to drop in the mail for Goozex, so Nat and I went for a nice walk and stopped along the way.

Later we went out to Ikea and Walmart, looking for ideas for dealing with the new space. Then we came home, and I chilled out.

I studied my 3D math book some more (forgot to mention that I studied it yesterday too). Studying is a weird form of exertion, because there's no interstitial unit for the purposes of measuring achievement. Either you get it, or you don't. "Kinda" doesn't map well to real numbers. Anyway, I spent an amount of time reading, and finally it clicked. The component of a vector A which is parallel to vector B is equal to vector B times the dot product of A and B divided by the square of the magnitude of vector B. Suck that, biatch!

After that, Natty and I went on a walk for about 2.5 miles. It's hot out, if you hadn't noticed.

When we came home, I tried to do some laundry, but apparently I share the machines with a retard. This idiot had gotten a load in, and then proceeded to take over 15 minutes to take care of their finished loads after they were finished. This meant that I wasted a lot of extra time coming down and finding that stuff was still occupied and inert. It was frustrating. I couldn't just pull their stuff out either, as the loads of laundry contained... strange panties. I'm not touchin that shit. Hells no.

In bits and bites, I read more of my math book and played a little Odin Sphere. Odin Sphere is very pretty, and kills me a lot. I'm not entirely certain what the penalty is for losing, or how exactly I can retry battles without erasing my save. I also ran into some confusion with my math book, as the current chapter's formulas contain a few errors. I'm happy to report that my understanding of the material is high enough that I caught the first two.

While surfing around a few XNA sites, I discovered that an update for XNA had been released... but not publicized on the news screen built into the application itself. Is that too much to ask? What got even more mystifying, was that it wouldn't install, until I had installed SP1 for my Visual C# Express 2005. Defying all of the conventional paths for acquiring updates to a Microsoft program, I eventually located the SP1 updater via Google. I wasn't done there yet either, as they'd thrown another wrench into the works, but providing multiple downloads on the one page, but not labeling them in any easily interpretable fashion. You had to refer to a table further up the page to learn the six digit KB article number which would then allow you to identify which download you required. It only took me a minute or so of scanning in order to realize that you only needed to pay attention to the last two digits in the number. This was really surprisingly difficult for a company like MS, who has this patching and update process honed.

Later Nat and I went on another short walk. I had a coupon for a free sub, but the shop was closed. So we walked the half mile back to Giant Eagle and I bought a couple burgers with the bacon and cheddar in them, for $3. I also grabbed a loaf of sourdough bread. What the heck, it's Memorial Day. It would be silly to not. (By the way, bacon in burger is good, cheese inside... not so much)

Anyway, the rest of the evening was spent in an uneventful lack of productivity, I think. It's hard to recall. I know I finished the XNA update. Anyway, g'night now.

It's Memorial Day weekend. I suppose I shouldn't beat myself up for doing absolutely nothing today? :) It was nice.

So after last night's LOTRO misadventure mistake, I didn't get up too early today. I think I'll not let myself play more than an hour at a time, maybe two hours if it's a weekend and I'm teamed up with somebody. I'm still pissed at myself for doing that last night.

Anyway, I'm not here to talk about days previous. Today I got up at ten, after hitting snooze several times. Breakfast was somewhat leisurely, but then I rolled into action. We still have the vague but fading promise that this joint might be suffering a parental visit this weekend, so I started cleaning. As of now, a lot of crap has been thrown out, put away in it's appropriate place and/or reorganized neatly. I've Swiffered the depths under the couch and entertainment center in the living room. I've vacuumed the hallway and dining room. The bathroom got swiffered also, but then I discovered that the floor mat in front of the sink seems to have attempted to bond with the bathroom floor. I peeled it up, and then got the thinnest putty knife we have and tried cleaning the decomposed rubber off of the floor. The heavy scrub brush was then employed. Clean-up was then done with paper towels. It wasn't really much of a success, since I wasn't in the mood to bust out the rubber gloves and employ harsh chemicals. I'm not even sure if that would have helped. It seemed like it was something that would require repetitive applications of elbow grease to really clean. Since I didn't want to be stepping in the sticky flooring, I eventually just gave up on this round and let the floormat lie where it had been. Hmm, anyway, I gave the sink and toilet a wipe-down, just on their top surfaces as I'm going for impression, not perfection, and I've got a lot of mileage to cover. Laundry got separated into its warm wash and cold wash piles. I went around with a small dish of white paint and put a second coat on a few places I'd already touched up. Somewhere in the middle of all this, I grabbed myself a sandwich from the bread I'd made. I tossed some lunch meat, swiss cheese and a dash of dry Parmesan and Romano. Then I toasted it and added a touch of dijon mustard. Mmmmm.

Having finished the vacuuming at about 4:30 PM, my next goal was to empty the cat boxes and trash cans in one fell swoop, but suffering from a bit of mental burnout, I let myself play a little Pinball FX and Aegis Wing. At about the same time, Nat asked me if I'd like to go on a walk with her. I told her that I'd just be unwinding for a few more minutes and then I'd do the trash, all of which would take me up to about 5 PM, when I'd be ready for a walk. Nat said that was great, but that she was going to go out for a short walk in the meantime. Finally running the gathered trash out around five, I saw that it had started raining. At the same time, I remembered that I'd left my car windows cracked. I tossed the stuff in the dumpster and ran back up the stairs. While I grabbed a shirt and an umbrella, the rain switched over from "hello sprinklings" to "did you notice that there's a displaced ocean overhead?" I pushed my way down the street with my umbrella almost collapsing from the force of the wind pushing against it. All but my head and the center line of my torso were getting soaked. I made it to the car, rolled up the windows and started wiping things down. At the same time, I called Nat, offering to rescue her from the rain. She was already walking in the door though. Since I'd already been pulling the car out to go looking for her, I spent a few minutes driving around the block and reparking. Then I slipped inside, soaked.

I ditched the soaked clothing and dried off. Then for the next hour I chilled at the computer for a bit, leisurely typing in the beginning of this blog post. I also realized that frickin' EB never called me to let me know that Odin Sphere was in! Dammit!

After this I checked in on Natty, who'd laid down on the bed with a book and fallen asleep. It didn't take much persuasion for me to fall asleep with her for about an hour. It was nice, except for the part where I woke myself up by jerking my head to one side, as inspired by a dream, and banging into the back of her head.

Later we went out to EB, where Nat bought my game for me. In turn, I took her to Shadyside and bought her dinner and gelato. Then we came home. Using her new Xbox 360 points, I bought Bejeweled 2 for her. She was pretty much settled for the night, so I played LOTRO.

Got to bed a little earlier last night, but the program was slightly derailed by the fact that I'd started my new loaf of bread baking on the late side, so there was no going to bed before it was done around 1:30 AM. And then after we took it out... ooooh, that smelled soooooo good.

So I got up this morning, and I think I'd slept poorly, on top of getting to sleep late. I still rode the bike. I thought that the last disc of the first season of the new Doctor Who series contained The Christmas Invasion, but instead I just got a disc full of behind-the-scenes stuff. Eh, it's all very nice and all, but I don't particularly care for watching that stuff, especially while biking.

Anyway, after that I got so caught up reading Wonder Boys over breakfast, that I wound up finishing the whole last 100+ pages. That ate up a good bit of the morning. After that, I just putzed around for a bit. I couldn't quite get started doing anything.

After a while, I decided to try to get started organizing my thoughts on SpaceHook by doing a design document. Chris Taylor, head designer for Supreme Commander and others, has made a template design document available, and I've been trying to work from that. I'm not sure if it's going to be as helpful to my software design as I thought, but it's hard to say.

After laying in a stub, I went downtown with Nat to drop off the keys for the new loft. Then we headed down to the Waterfront, with a stop in Shadyside along the way. We were trying to find an 11x17 poster frame and some boxes for moving. We eventually found the frame we needed at Michaels, but then Nat went into some sort of female arts'n'crafts shopping zombie state. I found myself staring at racks of knickknacks in desperation for the purgatory would end. I think we were there a few seconds shy of forever. I'm not sure whether it's the store or the clientèle, but I'm just about as comfortable there as watching Lifetime. There's just this underlying feeling that me and my Y chromosome just don't belong there.

Anyway, afterwards we came home. I played a few games on XBLA to try and shake myself loose. Then I sat at the computer and promptly started goofing off there too. I then upped Surfblinders to limit my surfing all the way through to 10 PM. Nat made my dinner for me, that delicious steak sandwich on homemade 3 cheese bread. I ate it at my desk. It was delicious, although the bread came out a bit fragile.

After that I've been working on the design doc a bit as well as laying in the beginning of today's verbose blog entry. After that Natty decided to go out for a walk, but I declined, feeling like I needed to get some more real work done. I stared at the computer for a while, unable to achieve anything. Nat gave me a call, asking me to check the Google Map hack pedometer for some info. At that point I decided that I'd hit a wall, and went out to join her. On my way to meet her, I finally figured out how to handle the object tracking problems that I've been having in SpaceHook (create a complex container "list" class). Furthermore, I should just start a v0.4 and bring over the v0.3 segments bit by bit to create the new version. That way I'll be able to make sense of it all.

So after all this, I decided that it would be cool to hop on LOTRO for a little bit. Big fucking mistake. I played for way too late. When I signed off, it was 2:30 AM. I did not intend to play that late, and I'm not going to let myself do that anymore, even on a weekend. At least not until my situation here changes. These late nights are detracting from... everything in my life. And I need to take responsibility. I might just have to cancel my subscription. I don't need this crap right now.

After the walk, we went to the grocery store. When we got home, it was near ten, and after the design doc work and the programming realization

So yesterday featured much discussion on how we haven't been getting to bed early enough. In good spirits, we promptly stayed up probably later than ever. It was fun though :)

Not so much this morning though, as dragging myself from bed was as difficult as ever. Despite all this, I still hopped on the bike. 400 calories in 15 minutes, no intervals though. My first instinct is that I just need to get back into stride with hitting the 400s consistently before I worry myself too much with the interval training, but I probably should make efforts now.

This morning I had the concentration powers of a gerbil. Speaking of pets, I was happy to discover that our cat fountain was dishwasher-safe. So I broke that down and gave it a run through. I also had to do some bits by hand though. Ick.

I surfed the PPG website, and didn't find any useful adverts for jobs. I emailed my buddy there, hopefully he'll have a lead or two I can work on.

Nat had a financial aid appointment down at her new school at four. We headed on down and were surprised when it got done before five. Taking advantage of this, we walked over to the property management offices and "borrowed" the keys to our new place so we could take some measurements. It took me a while, but I eventually found the old pad of graph paper I'd had sitting around with thoughts toward using it tonight.

After that I sat down and tried to get back into SpaceHook, but wasn't sure exactly where to jump back into it. I've got some structural changes that I want to make, and they're a bit complicated to work out. I think I would be greatly aided by starting an article in my wiki to sketch out everything SpaceHook.

My fog was interrupted by Nat, who was inviting me out for a walk. We wound up taking a 3+ mile walk. That was rather epic.

When we got back, I was beat, but I went on to cook up that steak Natty had got me the other day. I also tossed together the ingredients for a loaf of three cheese bread. Hey, I've got steak leftovers, so there's gonna have to be a delicious sandwich in my future :)

I was kinda beat after that, but cleaned up the kitchen a bit. I took out the trash. Then I stepped in a puddle, which let me know that I needed to sop out the bottom of the fridge. I separated some laundry. Then Nat and I ran over to the new apartment finally. We mostly just wanted to see what it was like during the night, and maybe get a loose idea of what to do with the space.

Then we came home and I was beat. I'm going to let myself play less than an hour of LOTRO and then I'm having an early night

I got to bed a little late last night, so I was slow in rising today. We had a doctor's appointment at noon today, at about an hour's drive away (just a lousy traffic situation in that direction). So anyway, I didn't really achieve anything before it was time to leave. Hour appointment, then under an hour on the way back (better traffic the opposite way). After that, Nat and I went for a walk.

I tried to do a little work next, but I couldn't concentrate. Soon after, it was time to drive up north to see Mom and Grandma. Traffic was horrible, and the 45 minute drive took an hour and a half. Then I got to see my own private idea of hell: The old folks' home. Then we took grandma out to dinner. Afterwards, I headed back south again.

I spent a little time in the wiki, writing up an idea I'd had for a game concept. Eventually Nat pulled me away for another walk, which was nice. When I got back, I got on the phone with Dave and played LOTRO some more. I think I'm going to start setting time limits on playing that.

Today got off to a rough start. While moving my car, I saw the lights at the intersection go out. I came home to find out that the power had flickered. On an odd hunch, I tried turning on my computer. It didn't.

I took out my frustration on the bike, breaking 400 calories in 15 minutes. Then I did the usual morning shower and breakfast and whatnot. Then it was back to the computer. Although an LED showed that power was getting through to the box, but not a fan was whirring when I pressed the power button. I thought I'd test the power supply in another box I have on hand, but when I got it in there, I found that the motherboard connector wasn't compatible. So much for differentiating whether the power supply or motherboard was the problem here. So my next resort was going to have to be paid support. Before I could do that though, I had to put everything back it was when the system first failed. That took a while, but eventually I had it all back in place. So I thought, why not? And I tried turning the damned thing back on again. And it worked! I have no idea why, but it's behaving itself again. It only took me a few hours to suss out.

My next goal was doing email. I'd forgotten to attach my resume when sending it to Nat's Mom. That got resent. I also finally manufactured the confidence to email Lifehacker about Surfblinders and iCloak. Hopefully they'll like!

I got a replacement credit card in the mail. I wound up spending waaaay too long on the phone to work things out. After that, Nat and I went down to the Waterfront to pick up some picture frames. We also stopped by PetCo, where Natty was seduced to giving a petting by a kitten's plaintive purr/meows. We spent a while there ;)

After we came home, we took another hour plus walk. Then I talked to my mother on the phone. At this point, it was past 10:30, so I just said to heck with it and called Dave and hopped on the LOTRO. Computer problems trumped XNA for the day

Biked. I even did 400 calories in 15 minutes, which was good, but I didn't try any interval training.

I surfed the PNC Bank website for jobs. I submitted my application for one. I also ran a resume by Nat's mother, just in case her connections might pan out.

My iTunes has been plagued by a bunch of crap Weezer bootlegs that Nat got from what she now refers to as the "waaaaay-too-complete weezer" torrent. (Hey, bootlegs are fair game... right?) Anyway, I torched the majority of them today while doing other things at the computer.

Went downtown with Nat to visit the condo management company. We dropped off our security deposit there, along with our pro-rated half-month of rent. We'll be able to move in starting June 15th.

I got my oil changed. I also spent forever waiting in line at the gas station in order to fill up my car and 5 gallon can. Here's the crafty thought: Given that one's accumulation of Fuelperks over time is going to be a fixed rate, then the longer you can go between fill-ups, the greater discount you will receive. I purchased a 5 gallon gas can and each time I use my discounts to fill up my car, I also fill up the gas can. That way, not only do I get an additional 5 gallons at the discounted rate, I also delay my next fill-up. By delaying my next fill-up, I will be more likely to have a _bigger_ discount. Of course in order to make a profit, I have to cover the cost of purchasing a can. If you have a few prescriptions to pick up at Giant Eagle, you'll probably cover the cost of your can pretty easily.

When I got home, I took out the trash, and then I cooked up the chicken breasts that I'd marinated earlier in the day. This was the first outing for our new George Foreman, and it worked out quite well. I don't quite know the appropriate times yet, so in erring on the safe side, I wound up with some slightly dry chicken breasts. I also just grabbed a bottle of whatever out of the fridge to do the marinating, and I wasn't exactly excited over the flavor it induced. All complaints aside though, I am very happy with the results.

I tried getting back into XNA programming today. I thought that the best place to warm up would be to go back to Riemers' lessons. This didn't work so well, because I apparently quit in the middle of a lesson and I'm having problems figuring out exactly where. Furthermore, it turns out that there's this error "LoaderLock was detected" which can occur when you're running freaking iTunes while testing XNA. This took me a half hour to track down.

Later that evening my mother called. She actually caught me at the checkout, but that didn't stop her. I wound up talking to her while I lugged all the groceries home, which was rather difficult, as I was without the aid of a headset. She talked through putting away groceries and feeding the cats. While we were still going, I even turned on the scanner and made copies of a few documents that Nat's father needs.

Then I played LOTRO for an hour, got killed, got irritated at it finally.

Hrm... I'd say it was sort of an off-day, but not an empty one. Here's the rapid-fire wrap-up: I biked. Patched the chip in the window-frame in the geek room. Printed out a CD of wedding photos for Nat's mom. Went for a walk. Set out early for Nat's mom's and stopped by Petco. Then went straight to her mother's house. Had meeting with Nat's mother, father and sister. Ugh. Drove Nat's father home. Went to Borders with Nat for mental detox. Read first two volumes of Preacher. Came home. Ate pizza. Wrestled with the concept of the rest of my life. Talked with Dave. Played LOTRO

Nat had a financial aid meeting today. We went in and were surprised that we need to use both of our financials.

Afterwards we walked around downtown for an hour or two. Then we came home for an hour. I played some LOTRO

Next Nat and I went to Macy's and exchanged a few gifts. We used the store credit to get an uber-George Foreman grill. We'll probably have it for a while, so getting one with a few more bells and whistles don't hurt. Afterwards we walked around the mall some more, since we wouldn't be able to walk outside in the crappy weather.

After we came home, I played Marvel: Ultimate Alliance with Dave over XBL. It really seemed rather cruddy, but entertainingly campy. I'll keep playing for a bit, but I can't overlook the fact that the game has some definite issues.

Hrm... today was an alright day. Natty and I took a walk for almost two hours. It was fun. I had the tour-slash-unofficial-interview today. That was interesting. I'm not sure what to expect from that for now. I'm going to start spreading my net again for other options. I don't know what to make of it all.

All in all, not a bad day. Not a banner day. I can't think of anything important, and I don't feel the urge to fluff up the post if it was a rather meh day.

Oh, I didn't ride the bike this morning, as I awoke to some stomach problems.

Today has been kind of slow. I think I'm sort of caught in the lurch where you've just wrapped up a project, but you're not ready to start the next?

I spent the morning just sort of puttered around cleaning, and doing some touch-up work on the painting. I drilled holes and installed the new wallplate to cover the giant freakin' hole they made when they put in the door buzzer system eons ago. I also touched up odd scuffs and chips around the house.

I peeled the plastic covering off of the windows of the french door. Ugh. Too many stupid little windows. It took forever. At least the thing came with the windows covered already though, because otherwise it would have been hell to tape.

Oh yeah, this morning I didn't bike. I just felt... like not biking? In some excuse, I called my general practitioner about my ear and sinus problems. He was supposed to call me back, but never did. :/

Natty and I drove around for a little while, trying several different stores in an effort to return the wedding gifts that we didn't want. Unfortunately, it looks like all of that stuff was bought at different stores. So much for the idea of upgrading the George Foreman to one of those over-priced versions. *Shrugs*

Again, I played LOTRO a little late. Hopefully tomorrow will be the transition that I would hope for. Keep your fingers crossed.

...wtf? That's weird! Blogger has updated their interface, but in a weird way. Now when I hit CTRL+S, it no longer publishes my post, it just saves a rough draft. It makes more sense now, but it was odd to see the change.

Today was a good day. I've finally put the wraps on the initial versions of iCloak and Surfblinders. As the link shows, I've put together a page for them on this site, but I've also uploaded them to UserScripts.org. After I've wrapped up this post, I'll be adding it to the front page too.

I had a poor round of biking this morning. I've been feeling an ache in my ear, and also kind of lethargic lately. I hope it's just an temporary affect of the weather, because I really don't need an ear infection.

In other news, Nat and I hit Target and Borders today. I also played a bit of LOTRO solo, since Dave was burnt out tonight. I'm going to try not to make LOTRO too much of a habit.

Anyway, I'm going to wrap this up quickly, so I can crash.

I woke up early and biked this morning. I just couldn't find the juice to interval train, much less keep up a quality pace, so I just kept at it over the fifteen minutes until I'd hit 400 calories.

There isn't too much of interest to report for the day. I made a few calls, and now will be having an interview on Friday. I also did a good deal of programming. That all went rather well, and I've made a lot of progress. Surfblinders Lite and iCloak are going to be real quality when I'm finished.

Anyway, this will be a short post. I'm off to crash

Ow, the tendons in my forearm are distinctly telling me to fornicate myself if I try typing this without any sort of wrist support on...

Ah, that's better. My usual regimen, heavy with mouse and keyboard work, is not beneficially augmented by my recent week of painting. Aaanyway, onto my day. I dragged myself forth from bed and hopped on the bike. I'm trying to work it interval-style with bursts of speed to strip calories more effectively. Since I took my month-plus break from biking due to Nat's hospital trip and the wedding, I've been having a hard time making it back up to the 400 calories in 15 minutes goal. I got back to that today while watching the new Doctor Who episode Dalek.

Natty made me a delicious lunch of banana pancakes. Mmmmmmmm. That's how you know you've married right.

After that I packed up Grandma's belated Mother's Day present, grabbed my mother's too, and headed over to the post office. The line was ridiculous in there, so we decided to come back later. I did drop off the application for our putative apartment, though. (Speculation: I think that the line was bad because today was the first day of the new stamp prices)

Then we went on over to CCAC, where Nat needed to pick up her transcripts. After an accidental turning by me, we wound up taking a leisurely and roundabout trip home.

I tried to make a few phone-calls back to my contact at Nat's school about that job, but I got his voicemail both times. Considering that I left him my number both times, I didn't want to push too hard by calling too often.

I worked on Javascript for a bit and made some headway, although I feel kind of short in concentration or willpower today. I just kinda wanna goof off. (hence the need for Surfblinders)

Natty and I went to Borders for a while. I read a little of the comics there, but then I used the rest of the time to code.

Returning home, I worked on programming some more. Surfblinders is doing well, but I think I might be reaching the point where I'm going to put it on ice for a while as I change my focus to working on XNA. If it comes to that point, I'll make certain to post up the latest version to my portfolio.

Anyway, I'm going to end this early tonight so that I can hook up the PS2 in the living room for playing Bully... but especially because Odin Sphere is on its way.

Today was another late riser. I got to bed a little earlier than the previous night, but Natty had the coughs last night. My dimly lit mind did the best it could to comfort her in the dead of the night, but I don't think I had enough awakened neurons to do much of a job.

After rising late and breakfasting, I laid into painting that damned door. I put on another coat of paint over everything that needed it. I also did basic touch-up around the entry-way, even stirring up the ceiling paint in order to cover up a few spots up above. I had lunch while paint dried, and then I went back in and pulled the painters tape off. It all came off pretty smoothly, except for the detail work around the handle and hinges. Things look good now, and I'm essentially finished. I'll need to go back through with the red over some splatter, but that's alright.

After those hours had passed, I took care of trash around the house. While making the mid-day draft up for my blog-post, I painfully realized that I hadn't dealt with the cat boxes. Damnit.

I spent some time working on Surfblinders, then drove over to Borders with Natty. Calling from the car, I managed to get my grandmother on the phone. I wished her a happy Mother's Day and we had a long talk. I stood outside while Natty went in to read. It was a pretty good conversation, but talking about my pending move and hearing my mother's point of view filtering through from Grandma made me rather not want to call my mother. This whole deal with them going behind my back makes me feel sad and distant. Don't worry. Mom gets her call eventually.

After talking with Grandma, I went in Borders and tried to work on Surfblinders via the laptop. I encountered some odd issues where it wasn't firing for me at all. I think that this might have been due to version problems, or perhaps that I was viewing files on my own harddrive.

I figured out the issues when I got home, but also I wised up and iterated Surfblinders up to v0.7 It's really coming along well now.

Then I spent a couple hours playing LOTRO with Dave

All in all, it was an alright day.

After last night's weekend LOTRO binge, I woke up rather late today. This ate into productivity somewhat. I painted, and I've pretty much wrapped up the basic bulk of the painting job. Now I need to apply a second coat (perhaps not all surfaces) and also use this matched paint to go around and cover up a few nicks and scratches.

We also ran down to the Waterfront again, although that was mostly a lark of an outing. Anya has loved her new cat toy waaaay too much, considering that it's consistently getting lost where daddy can't find it. No matter how much I'd pleaded with her, she wouldn't drop the insistent meowing for me to find it. Well, we bought a few more while we were out, and a bottle of the cat "gravy" that Nonami craves. Afterwards I took Natty out for a sushi dinner, and then she bought me dessert gelato.

After we got home, I played LOTRO with Dave online.

Today was another slow starter, but I rode that bike. That went alright.

I spent a couple hours painting. I covered all surfaces of the door jamb and also the outside edges of the door. I painted most of the second face of the door, but avoided getting caught up on the intricacies of painting the crosspieces. I'll get them tomorrow. I primarily had to stop because I'd apparently dripped a little paint on the hardwood floor. Fortunately that cleaned off easily and without a mark.

There was this hilarious moment after painting, when Nat caught Nonami getting overly interested in the crumpled dropcloth. Being Nami, she didn't give two s***s about Nat's hissing, so I trotted up and clapped my hands right over Nami's head. She immediately wheeled around and ran straight into the wall. I must have laughed for five minutes straight at the dull thud that arose. Don't worry though, the kitten's exceptionally thick skull protected her.

I called back my contact at the place that Nat's going to go to school this fall. I'm to call them back on Monday in order to set up an interview. I'm not particularly excited about the workplace or just being in IT, but if I work in the building, then Nat's completion of her education is all but guaranteed.

Natty and I went for a walk

Later on I worked on Javascript for a bit, and Surfblinders as a single Greasemonkey script is now up and working! Huzzah!

I rewarded myself by playing way too much LOTRO though. Damned LOTRO

Today started off reeeeeeeeally slow. I couldn't pull my butt out of bed. I'd gotten to bed too late again, which was half my fault and half Nat's. I got to bed late, and then she wanted to hang out talking and stuff for a while after that. It's something I need to fix, but unfortunately, I am not holding up my end of things tonight. The thing is that I finished playing Xbox almost an hour ago, and I've actually been sitting here tinkering with the SurfBlinders test code again. I seem to be mucking something up with the JavaScript Date object. While this page shows the right time, my code keeps telling me that it's freakin January 24th 1970. Since the time is stored as milliseconds since 1970, I seem to be losing a lot of milliseconds.

Anyway, after my slow start, I watched multiple episodes of the new Doctor Who. Nat watched a little with me, and she enjoyed it.

I spent several hours painting today. I was painting the french door, and that takes forever. Sure the glass is all covered up, but the crosspieces take forever, especially with the gloss paint.

We went out on errands for a few hours. We hit the Waterfront mostly. Nat needed some sandals for summer, but trips there always wind up hitting all the stops. We've been there too many times this week.

Later the night, we played Catan online with Dave. Nat played one round with him, and then I played a round. Afterwards, I hopped on the computer, which led right back around to this post.

And after the post? Good night!

Ugh, this was yet another slow day to drag my ass out of bed. I did manage to get my butt up on the bike though.

I pulled the tape off of the door. That took a while as we'd left the tape up too long and it had gotten soaked by the paint and had started bonding. When I tried to pull it, the damned thing kept tearing and leaving a fingernail of junk along the painted edge. That was a bear to clean off. Later, I painted up the edges that had been marred by the tape removal.

Cleaned old food out of the fridge and emptied the kitchen trash can. Lugged all that down to the dumpster because it's that time of year that it would be pretty ripe in just a few days. Afterwards, I swept the kitchen floor, which was getting a bit crummy.

I got a hit from my recent posting on the Pittsburgh Technology Council website. Had a nice call with a recruiter who had a few questions about things.

Nat had a doctor's appointment, and while waiting, I was well-behaved and studied my 3D math book. After getting tired of that, I went with flexing my creative muscle and sketched for a bit.

After getting home, we went for a walk for dinner. I can't say that my night was particularly productive, but I felt the need to relax.

I didn't sleep too hot last night, due to a restless bedmate who tried pushing me out of bed in her sleep. This made me tired as heck getting started. I started up Doctor Who, but eventually just gave up on biking this morning.

I did some painting and spackling. It was relatively lame level, but it was necessary to finish the buttermilk (ugh) paint before removing the tape. Fortunately, I had the foresight to caulk everything else needed.

We went and saw the loft that we're going to get. We measured around a bit and took a few pix. They'll get shared around as soon as I find the camera again. I think it's in Natty's bag.

Afterwards we went to Borders, where I did my thing of relaxing with comics, and then picking up actual intelligent reading about computer programming and stuff. Today's topic was JavaScript mostly.

The JavaScript answered a few questions I had for programming Surfblinders. I came home and implemented them over the next hour or two... unfortunately I wasn't able to get it to work the way I want it to, so now I get to debug... ugh.

The night finally got capped off with an hour plus of LOTRO, which was fun. But dammit Dave, I need a rowan axe to go with those hafts! When am I ever going to finish stupid quests?

Today had it's ups and downs. I got up and biked while watching some of the new Doctor Who. Let's just say that I'm going to withhold review for a little while first.

I didn't get anything done on the doorway because Nat insisted that she do her share of the work by spackling. Unfortunately, I couldn't paint until she spackled, which it took forever to get her to do. Part of the problem was that we were awaiting callback about the lofts that we want to move into, so it wasn't all Nat's fault.

Also, Natty clippered my hair today. It looks good.

While waiting for Natty to spackle, I posted up my resume at the Pittsburgh Tech Council. I skimmed the jobs there, but I didn't get around to replying to any posts. My thunder had been stolen by an earlier callback from our contact at the Western School. There's nothing certain, but if I can get a job at the place that Nat is going to classes, her education is all but guaranteed as successful.

I spent a little time on the Javascript for my Surfblinders plugin. I really need to just decide whether to give up on that for the moment.

Nat and I hit the Southside and the Waterfront on errands.

I spent an hour or two of the evening in good phone conversation with Dave whilst playing that damned Puzzle Quest. Maybe I should offload it for my own health? That proved to be a beneficial act with both Viva Pinata and Crackdown. I'm not sure, but I'll at least pull it from the DS tonight.

Anyway, I'm not exactly satisfied with my accomplishments today, but at the same time, I feel like external factors were largely at fault.

Got off to a deliciously slow start today, as Natty woke me up to homemade pancakes... Mmm, delicious! Afterwards, I wasn't very productive for a while, mostly due to Puzzle Quest.

Put up a second layer of buttermilk (ugh) paint around the hallway door.

Gathered trash and recyclables. Cleared floors and then vacuumed. Took out trash.

Emptied old potting soil from the planter on the deck, then put in fresh soil. Planted the basil and chives seeds that we'd picked up at the grocery store. Dug out the MiracleGro and watered them.

Listened to a really interesting Gamasutra podcast during a good bit of chores I'd been doing. The guy's spiel on finding jobs in the game industry made me think a lot about the future.

Talked with Nat about our future. It looks like we're definately going to be moving. It turns out that my parents approve of Nat's dad giving us the boot. I'm not sure what to feel about this. The easiest thing to do is to not try to figure it out, but instead to address the needs and requirements for our decided path.

Inspired by the podcast, I opened up my old SurfBlinders project and took a look at it. I thought that it was broken at first, because it was posting the nag message, without blocking the page, but iCloak works just fine. Upon reviewing the code, I discovered that it wasn't built in yet. I spent some time working on this. I wound up spending a lot of time reviewing Javascript functions that I needed, but was not yet familiar with.

Later Nat and I went for a walk through Bloomfield. Twas nice.

Later on, I rounded out the night online with Dave, playing Catan via Xbox Live. I enjoyed it, but it's going to take some learning.

I tried sleeping in a bit today, but car alarms and caterwauling fixed that. I painted more of the hallway door area today. It sucks, but Home Depot didn't match the paint well enough. The flat area above the door looks fine, but anywhere that I tried doing touch-ups looks bad.

We also ran out to Ikea and a pet store, and ate at the new Pizza Palermo down the street. Pretty good stuff and the service was good, but their nationalities made me wonder if they're related to the 2nd Google hit for their store's name.

Anyway, later I came home and played too much LOTRO with Dave. Time for bed. L8r

Painted and played LotR:O with Dave. That's my terse, but accurate summary for the day.

Despite strong resistance, I got my butt up on the bike again this morning. It was still a difficult effort, but I'm crawling back towards 400 in 15.

I finally sucked it up and sent out a few resumes this morning. I sent one to our contact at the place where Natty's going to school this fall. I also sent to one of my buddies. Two more were sent out to recruiting agencies.

I also emptied the cats' litterboxes, after Willow's odoriferous emanations demanded it.

Condo fees were paid and mailed out.

We went to another apartment viewing. We liked this place, but there are some pluses and minuses that we need to work out. We're contrasting this place against that loft that we liked, and in some ways, the loft's coming out looking a lot better than it did at first.

After the viewing, Nat and I dropped by Borders for a while. I read some comics trade paperbacks, and then delved into computer books. From one I pulled down this link, which will hopefully help me blot out dangerous and distracting websites from this here computer.

We walked over to Qdoba for dinner, which was quite nice (although for my meal I should have taken a longer walk). We stopped by the grocery store. I put up some more painters tape around the hallway door. Downloaded Catan (nope, no "Settlers") for the Xbox. Set up Dave's Wii friend code.

All in all, it was a decently productive day.

Today was a sloppy day. I wound up inadvertently taking a two hour nap with Nat and that just ruined me for the rest of the day. I've been just so sleepy and out of it. Nat was asthmatic, so she wasn't up for doing much. Despite our lethargies, we had to go out for a doctor's appointment too.

I'm going to cut this entry short, because I didn't accomplish much, and I just want to go to bed and sleep. Hopefully tomorrow will be better

I was a good boy and biked again today. I'm still not back to doing 400 calories in 15 minutes, but I'm going to keep at it.

We went and viewed another apartment. This one will be alright after they're done renovating it, but still kinda sucked. We did get a tip on another apartment, which we'll be viewing in a couple of days.

After viewing the apartment, Nat and I walked over to the post office so I could ship out a few Goozex games, and a package to Dave. I also dropped off a game to return to GamezNFlix. I'm impressed: it's already marked as returned on my queue. If this was GameFly, that game wouldn't have been returned for another 2 weeks.

Next it was off to the doctor's office, which sucked because traffic was bad on the way out, worse on the way back, and we lay there dozing for a dull 45 minutes in the waiting room before the doctor showed up.

As for other things I did when I got home? I paid my medical insurance and a couple other bills. I activated my regularly scheduled credit card replacement. I packed away the dusty golden N64 from the bedroom. I put all of the scattered boxes back into the geek room closet. I'd had to pull them all in order to pull an air conditioner from its depths. Set up a doctor's appointment for Natty. Assigned my main PC a static IP address so I'll be able to screen internet traffic and save my soul. Updated my voicemail message since I've a working phone now. Watched South Park with Natty. Called someone with a follow-up about a job.

Now I just need to write down things to do tomorrow. This new checklist is working really well. Then I'll go watch an episode of the Venture Bros with Natty, and then sleep.

It was a decent day.