Ben's Busy Blog

Today was an alright day. I finished off another tube of caulk filling gaps around the place. Much to my dismay I discovered that a out-of-the-way spot in the bedroom has a big freakin hole in the wall. Big enough to easily fit a brick into (although the place is built with cinder block). I vacuumed along the whole wall and then stuck the end of the hose into the hole. I pulled a lot of dust and little rocks out of there. I figure if I didn't clean it up, it's probably waft out through another hole. Then I filled a plastic grocery bag with wadded up paper and plugged the hole with it. Next I cut a piece of cardboard to fit and taped it in place. It's not the greatest job, but it'll prevent drafts, rocks and dust from coming out of there. You can't see it unless you put your head under my nightstand, so looking pretty is rather optional.

The cardboard used above came from sorting out two more boxes today. I found a stack of old financial documents going all the way back to 2002. I spent some time shredding them. Probably unnecessary, but it feels good. The corner of boxes is slowly becoming more organized.

I programmed for a while. Spacehook's innards are becoming something more orderly and less of a primordial stew. The funny thing is that I'm doing a bunch of work, and teaching myself a bunch of concepts, and yet none of it really shows on the front end. I also added the ability to pause. This took like 5 lines of code and was really easy to implement, and yet it packs that tactile improvement that even made me get all happy and go "wow". As a side note, I'm somewhat disgusted to find that XNA doesn't include support for the Pause/Break key. They forgot it. They forgot the freaking key! WTF?

Nat and I also went for a walk tonight. I remembered to call Grandma (thanks Nat), as requested by my mother, who's on vacation. Mom's afraid that Grandma's going to die, sad and alone, while Mom's away. *sigh* This is the same mother of mine who gets annoyed when I don't call, and yet rarely calls me, nor does she ever think to invite us along if they come down for something like the zoo. We live 10 minutes from the zoo. She lives about an hour. Nat likes animals. It makes sense to me. *shrugs*

Anyway, rant off, I'm done.

Today was a pretty laid back day. I hung up a few pictures. Much to my surprise, there are more concrete walls in here than I'd initially thought. I should have remembered that we're in the corner of the building, so the refurbishers wouldn't have thrown up many walls in the process. I always feel a bit embarrassed when I have to drill in an anchor to hang a picture. I also hung up the markerboard.

Nat assessed a major frontal assault on a bunch of the junk that's accumulated around here. I think I'll address my own pile tomorrow.

We also went for a walk. There was other stuff too, but I've just been so mentally sluggish...

Bleah. Screw it, I'm done. Laters.

Man, it's a real temptation to say Caturday instead.

I programmed for a good bit today. I'm happy with the progress that I'm making. I've generated a good deal of code. It's all going somewhere, which is great. I'm a little annoyed though that it looks like I'm going to be shuffling a bit of it around soon though. That's progress, I guess.

Vacuumed the hell out of the place earlier. Not just the carpets, but the furniture, metal stairs, bathmats, and every other nook and crany that's attracted dustballs and cat hair. I even got on top of the ductwork and power conduits and stuff. There was just a lot of latent dust from the work that had been done before we moved in. I had just decided that it was just going to be a nuisance at some point, so I might as well just lower the total amount of dust that was around this house.

I also ran some more trash out. This was partly from cleaning out the fridge, but there were also some boxes which had been emptied. Furthermore I took out a few things like unused and unnecessary backstops for our island countertops, and also some two by fours that I've had sitting around forever. It was nice getting rid of stuff. Nat cleaned out a few things too, which helped.

Natty ordered her new laptop today. I had some misgivings about this, but I can't entirely fault her. She uses the laptop a ton more than she uses the iMac. Furthermore this idiotic nonsense with the further ineptitue of Best Buy's customer service means that we won't really be able to take our current laptop on the trip with us. *shrugs* She's spending her money, which sort of is my money too, but it's still under her discretion. Part of the dissonance, I suppose, is the fact that I wouldn't have gone out for the same laptop that she did. I would have gone for something a bit cheaper, whereas she wanted something that was future-proofed and wouldn't require opening the system for anything (in fear of warranty issues). *shrugs*

Took out the trash.

Called recruiters to follow up on last Friday's activities. The place I interviewed at is still interviewing candidates, which isn't the best sign, but isn't necessarily a sign of impending trouble. At the other place, I apparently passed the pre-interview test. *shrugs* as to what that means in the long run.

Programmed a bit. I think I found the best way today to describe what I'm doing to someone who doesn't get it. I'm going to be increasing the size of the program by 150% to 200%. All of this is required behind-the-scenes stuff and it's concepts that I will be reusing for a very long time. Of course proper programming (at least as taught in school) would be whuppin my ass for not figuring out the orders of complexity and shit. The beauty of completing what I'm trying to do is that I'll be able to seamlessly plug in more intelligent solutions when I arrive at them. Right now I gotta work out the basic rough code and the required "plugable" interface.

I've been tired today. I even took a nap.

I had a talk with Natty about getting organized. Hopefully it'll work.

I know I did other stuff today, but at this point, I am falling asleep and don't recall. Poor post today, really. Sorry.
Played LoTR:O late.

I forget how I spent the morning. I know that I just felt despondent and couldn't justify taking any action. I was just kind of miserable.

After a while we went up towards Kittanning, because Rich had set up a friend with a nice computer, but they were having some issues. I met him and then followed him to the friend's house. It was pretty easy to me. Real cut and dry stuff. Reboot the router, refresh ip, log to router via internet browser, clone MAC address. I also set up his plug'n'play printer and pointed out that his speakers weren't working because he didn't have them plugged in.

Afterwards, we went out to a late lunch / early dinner with my parents. We also went for a walk around Oakland.

Today was a somewhat quiet day. I spent a lot of time programming. It's starting to pick up pace. I really wish that I was working on features instead of the dull object manager internals. It's just not very rewarding. Especially when I can't explain it to somebody. Now I think I understand why graphics are the number one thing that's pushed for most games.

I also spent a good deal of time hanging out with Natty today. She's still pretty beaten up inside over this deal with her schooling just getting yanked out from under her. It's not her fault that the school discontinued the program so abruptly, but it's heavily disheartening. We also had a doctor's appointment today which was kind of epic, but in the end she felt a lot better afterwards.

We also went for a nice walk. Anyway, it was a little slow today, but I think it went alright. I think that I'm going to have to make an effort to program on the laptop more though. It's less distracting.

Yesterday, I discovered that some of the old framed awards I've had sitting around had some hidden treasures concealed within their frames. I pulled the awards out and found some old pictures behind them. There are some portraits of me an my family when I was quite young. There's also a hilarious group shot from my brother's summer camp, circa 1984. I spent some of the morning getting them all out again and scanning them into the computer for posterity.

Speaking of posterity, I also spent some time uploading some of our moving in videos to YouTube.

For the rest of the day, things didn't go so well. We started to head out north to visit my parents and do a little tech support. We picked up the mail on the way out and while we were in the car, Nat found out some really bad news about the program that she was going to attend this fall. It seems that the Western School of Pittsburgh was in danger of losing their certification for Radiology and has decided to just completely cancel the program for this fall. This is incredibly dick, being as we probably don't have time to arrange for another program this fall. I don't know what to do about things. Everything was based around this. I was getting a job downtown so I could be close to where Nat was going to school. Now they've gone and completely fucked up everything. All of our plans were wrapped around this and we've been completely screwed over... Anyway, I'm done ranting, because I can feel my stomach telling me that I need to get some Tums. Nat's really distraught, varying between feeling like she's cursed, to worrying that her parents are going to armchair quarterback the whole deal and call her an idiot. *sigh* I'm kinda embattled right now.

I also didn't hear anything about the jobs from last week, which is a shame on top of everything else. *double sigh* I'll try to sort that out tomorrow.

Oh, and since I'm just dumping grievances, I also got a goddamned letter from the condo association from where we used to live. The dumb bastards are still charging us the condo fees. Me! And I looked up my bank statements and they had cashed the check accompanying my letter informing them we're moving out! *ugh*

So yeah, today was just shot.

I assembled the other Ikea stool. This one went a lot more smoothly, since I now knew how to tell that I'd gotten the orientation right. Unfortunately the screws into the bottom of the seat proved to be even harder to put in this time. The heads just aren't built to handle the amount of force necessary to sink the screws into the plastic. You just wind up stripping them.

I hung up my bulletin board using screws and anchors, since I'm a little worried about the weight. Later in the day, I hung up a picture, once I had Natty around to give her opinions on where she'd like it.

I got all messy again, putting caulk up on the "rough" wall. It looks a lot better now that there aren't as many little black gaps and holes. In a decision that doesn't look as good with the white caulk, I also tried doing the hole in the floor where the ants have apparently been coming through. That got all goopy and difficult, so I decided to give it a break for a while, so I could see where the ants might still be emerging from. I covered a good deal of territory, but there's just too much area where I can't tell whether I'm looking at a chipped surface or a penetrating crack. (Hush, get your mind out of toilet)

A few more boxes were slowly waded through. I managed to throw a few things out, but a lot of things are just clutter again. All I can figure to do is get the boxes undone, and then attack the piles of crap that gather. Hopefully this will be a sufficiently lossy procedure, and eventually there will be no crap. I hope.

The cable guy dropped by today as our receiver box has been failing intermittently. In a very happy occasion, it was replaced with a brand-new happy shiny HD receiver :) It's currently hooked up with component cables, but we have already ordered some very reasonably priced HDMI cables from NewEgg.

While I was letting the cable guy in, I discovered that a couple packages had arrived in the mail. One of them was our wedding dvds! I'm a little surprised that it contained the DVDs and nothing else, but wedding stuff is wedding stuff. While the cable guy was doing his magic, we were watching ourselves get married all over again. Oh, and a shout-out to my nephew: Dude, you were totally picking your nose, and will be embarrassed by this greatly when you're older.

I borrowed Nat's cellphone and her computer for a bit, trying to see if I could get her camera-phone blog working again. Results are pending Blogger's recognition of the phone. Despite having re-associated it on the website, every test has resulted in it offering her a temporary URL unassociated with her current blogs.

Nat and I started to go for a walk this evening, but a short ways into it, she was stuck by some ill feelings, so we headed home. I hung out with her in the bedroom for a while, cheering her up until she felt better. We listed to the soundtrack from Amelie, which was really relaxing.

I did a little programming, but then Dave gave me a call and I hopped on LOTRO for a while. I need to try harder at programming earlier in the day.

Today was a day of rest. I relaxed a good deal today, and I don't really feel bad about it. If I feel like getting on my case about it, then I can just work harder during the week. And by resting, then I'll be refreshed enough to accomplish my goals, hopefully. I did do a few things around the house today, like cleaning out the cat boxes... which is a task that others would balk at, I assure you ;)

Sorry about the no-post yesterday. I procrastinated until it was too late, and then today I forgot that I had neglected.

Friday was a pretty busy day. I slept in a little, in hopes of being better rested. Then I got dressed in my suit and tie and headed out to meet my buddy, who works at one of the places I visited. We hung out for a half-hour, talking about moving and how his wife is expecting. Then I went in and took a pre-interview test. Along with the preliminary forms, I was there for about an hour and a half. Then I hopped in the car and drove across the bridge to the next stop. There I had a full-fledged interview. It was two stages with two different people. I think that went pretty well, but they have to interview another person on Monday. After finding out more about the position, I'd have to say that I found it very interesting, and that it carries a resume quality title. I think I would accept if it were offered. On the other hand, it's a bit of a new field for me personally, so I accept the possibility that another interviewee may have credentials that supersede my own. We'll just have to wait and see.

After that I was home for a bit over an hour and then we had to go over to our old place to get the last lot of stuff from the second bedroom, as they were cleaning the carpets this Saturday morning. There were some things that we just finally said to hell with, and that her sister could decide whether to keep or dispose of them. I can easily justify it as the final payment for backing out at the last minute on helping us move. They can just move things to the dumpster. We still need to check the storage area, but since we didn't have the combination for the lock with us, it was a moot point.

After that I believe I mostly relaxed for the rest of the night, but I can't say for sure. I know that with the interviews and moving stuff, it came out feeling like a pretty full day.

Today I slept in a good bit, and enjoyed it. After getting up I took to doing a few chores around the house, but I'm trying to treat the weekends more as time off. If I get anything done on the weekends, it's bonus. By relaxing on the weekends more, I've felt a good deal less harried during the week, and I think it's reflected in productivity honestly. And I'm still getting things done, but I'm not criticizing myself for shortcomings on the weekend. Anyway, today I took out the trash and ran a few loads of laundry. It's hard to specify how much laundry you've accomplished around here, because traditionally you put one armful of clothes in the washer, then move it to the dryer and then after folding it you can quantify it as one load of laundry accomplished. Here though, the washing machines are small and the dryers are huge. I typically use three washers and then two dryers. *shrugs*

I also used up the last of the caulk to patch up some holes in the bedroom. I could use a bit more though. I also assembled one of the Ikea stools, which wound up taking a bit longer than I expected due to the directions not sufficiently discriminating between the very similar parts. I got halfway done and then had to disassemble the damned thing.

Nat and I also went for a walk. I feel like I've forgotten something else, but oh well, it's the weekend :)

Today was an odd day, I'll have to say. One of those days where by the end of the day, your memories of the morning have to have had come from a different day. It's crazy.

The day started weird. I forgot to set my alarm last night, which is something that I'm not prone to doing without conscious decision. It didn't matter though, because I didn't sleep in much before I was woken by my phone ringing. Last Friday I went in for a meet and greet with a placement agency with whom I've had on and off contact for the last few years, but not one that's set me up anywhere yet. This morning they called me about a job interview tomorrow. It's a bit of a stretch for me, but if I get it, I'll have taken my career in an interesting new direction and possibly with a nice job title to match. It's all come on a bit quickly though, so I'm playing this one with a bit of caution along with my interest. Anyway, there were several calls about this one throughout the day.

I also fielded several calls from the other recruiting firm responsible for yesterday's interview. Some were follow-up, others were about the pre-interview thing I've also got going on tomorrow. Friday's going to be a busy day.

I was pretty mentally messed by the combination of accidentally oversleeping, waking up to the call, and receiving the oblique interview offer. I wandered into the shower and back out again without actually using it, a pretty good sign that I was a little goofy. Eventually I got back on an even keel and I used my new caulking gun to patch up some the numerous holes in the one wall. It's a nice loft, I just think that they went a little too clever by making that wall's conversion look bumpy and "authentic" by not doing a very thorough job on it. I especially hit all of the cracks along the floor near the windows, since the cat food was attracting some ants. We'll have to see if that worked.

I emptied the dishwasher and then broke down the cat's water fountain and ran most of it through the dishwasher. The little impeller engine has to be done by hand. That was rather gross. Our girls are purportedly to have cleaner mouths than ours, but that was nasty.

Natty and I set out for a few errands. I doublechecked our old building and old apartment to see if our errant FedEx package had shown up. Finding nothing, I posted a notice for people to call me about this. I received a call later in the day from someone who'd let the FedEx guy in, and saw him leave the package on the radiator casing. I expressed my hopes that someone was trying to be a good Samaritan, but was just being slow about it.

The funny thing was that we had already been planning to go shopping for new dress shirts and black shoes today. This became necessary with the pending interview tomorrow. We stopped by Target first to see what we could see. Unfortunately it wound up that Natty bought more there than I did. After that we hit Macy's where I found a nice dress shirt. Then we hit DSW for new dress shoes.

After that we got home, and I was tired and Natty was kinda worn out too, so we chilled out for a while. Then I spent a bit getting things ready and prepared for tomorrow. I also paid some bills online. I did some research on this other place that I'll be interviewing. Should be interesting. I don't know, but hopefully tomorrow will be a happy day.

I had an interview this morning. It went pretty well, but there are some details about the position that might make it a tough sell. I don't know if there's a place for me to make decisions on this one yet, so we'll just see.

Stopped by the ARL and bought a couple new cardboard cat scratchers to replace the aging ones we have. I like buying there since proceeds support the ARL. Then we went out to Robinson Shopalopalis and hit Ikea and a couple other places. Ikea, of course, was out of stock on the thing that we were looking for.

*argh* FedEx 'delivered' the replacement battery for our laptop by just leaving it lying around at our old building. We dropped by the same day it was delivered and it wasn't freaking there. I'm gonna have to bust some heads.

*shrugs* It wasn't a bad day, though.

Today marked some ups and downs in productivity. Last night I had a lot of trouble falling asleep. Not only was I not sleepy, but then the cats were jack-assing about the bedroom door, which loudly reverberated with each move. Finally I gave up trying to sleep through it and chased them off. Then when I lay back down again, I couldn't stop hearing the splashing water that signals that their water dish is running low. So I got up and took care of that, then it was time to lie down and try to fall back asleep.

When I awoke this morning, I was a mess. Then as I was eating breakfast, DubiousQuality went and linked me to the hilarious geek epic of a Dwarf Fortress game shared amongst multiple SomethingAwful forum goons. This distracted me for hours this morning, I think.

I emptied a few boxes and shuffled some stuff around. Had a few points of contact with my placement agency about tomorrow and this Friday. I'm starting to feel a little wary of tomorrow's appointment. There seems to be a bit of a build-up over a job that hasn't shown a lot of attractiveness yet. Twelve hour shifts? I'm understandably hesitant, but perhaps there are off-setting features.

Later Nat had a doctor's appointment that she was nervous about. We've both been kinda stressed and wound up having an argument before we left. Things worked out though. The appointment went without complication and she was very relieved.

Later we ran a few errands, hitting Home Depot and Giant Eagle.

I spent the evening trying to get back on the ball with programming SpaceHook. I'm going to put up a corner on my website where the latest stable builds are available for download. As for progress, it was rocky tonight. Aside from all of the uproar with the wedding and moving, another reason that I fell off the horse was that the code had reached a point where it was going to require a major organizational rewrite. I was basically going to have to excavate a major portion of the code to offload it into a black box function, in order to protect the rest of the code from the possible heavy complexity that this function was going to require soon. Basically I'm constructing a separate object manager that's going to display some database functions. I spent a lot of time researching and tinkering tonight. Since I want my program to work on my Xbox 360 (when it returns from RMA), I can't use SQL, so the internal workings of the object manager can't be off-the-shelf components. I'm going to have to code this from scratch, which is why it definitely needs extracted from the rest of the code. This major change to structure requires a lot of other tinkering though. Ugh, in short, I'm tearing up the foundations and renovating hardcore.

So what did I accomplish in the end? Implementing the new font capabilities that were introduced in the "1.0 Refresh". That was more of a pain in the ass than it needed to be, since it requires you to use the "name" of the font that's used by Windows. The first open-source font I grabbed was at the start of the alphabetical list. Unfortunately it was there because it started with Æ, and as far as I can tell, XNA don't like that. I replaced it with a freeware font that I didn't like as much, but I just want to be able to output to screen useful information for now. I'll worry about art and artifice later.

Anyway, I need to crash. Early goings tomorrow for the interview

I haven't worked hard today, but I've definitely accomplished much.

I called Verizon on the phone and got our cell phone accounts sorted out. We had tried to get our plans combined under a family plan, along with getting an extra "house" phone for $10 more. Instead they'd set us up with two family plan lines, with Nat's phone still under her old plan but now paid under my bill. I got that all straightened out and then paid my bill online. It's still a ridiculously high bill, but a good bit of it's being reimbursed on next month's bill.

I had a productive phone call with the placement agency that had me at my last job. It's always comforting to hear that my last employer through them is still registering their happiness at the job that I did there. I have an interview Wednesday with one place. I believe that job works a swing-shift, so it's got a strike against it, up front. On Friday I have the opening stages to another job possibly. It's a bit more complicated situation, and would be a new line of work for me, but there are some very appealing elements.

I also paid the balance for electricity at this place, since we were a little late getting accounts changed over. This was thanks to the moving fiasco. I also set up an automated reminder for paying the rent.

Later Nat and I went over the old condo together and loaded up the car to the brim with stuff. Then we went over to start up a storage locker that we had reserved. It's going to be about $90 for two months, and then about $80 per month afterwards. I hope to only keep it for the two at most. We're just running out of space here. Yes, we could stack boxes here, but we're trying to create a living space here. And the stressful effects of having a wall of cardboard boxes of crap, just looming at you, it shouldn't be ignored. That kind of thing stresses me out.

Going back to the old place really stresses Nat out, especially seeing how her sister's shoddy stewardship is already ruining the place. I shouldn't say "ruining" but they're painting using leftover stuff from her mother's place, and I really don't think that it suits an 80+ year old Arts and Crafts the way that it might for a late nineties McMansion-wannabe townhouse. Anyway, Nat suggested going to Borders to unwind after moving the stuff, and I gladly endorsed the plot. We chilled for a while reading.

Later we went for a walk around Shadyside, after I deposited a few checks. We also dropped off our large amount of plastic bags for recycling. Feeling a sense of accomplishment from all the stuff that had gone on, I probably played LOTRO too much.

Today I gave myself the day off, because I was feeling a bit burnt out. At the end of the night here, I feel really good... which seems like I did the right thing. The big question is whether I'm going to be able to push myself harder tomorrow for having done this. I don't know yet, but we'll have to wait and see. I hope you had a good day too.

Today was alright. I attacked the mass of laundry that had grown since we moved in. It was all over the place in various storage containers. I tracked it all down and sorted it, then made a couple loads of wash, then dried it and folded it. As always, that seems to take up a lot more time than you'd initially expect.

I also did another round of gathering trash and taking it out. It's always nice to see a couple more cardboard boxes disappearing.

Nat reassembled the hallway shelving to create a bench. She even used an old blanket to create a pad for the seat. It looks a lot better than the way I had it set up, and it's going to be really useful too. She also put a couple hooks up in the bathroom for hanging a few things like a mirror and a brush.

Having amassed a list of a bunch of odds and ends that we needed, we set off for the Waterfront. We found nothing really. We need a chest for bedding, since there's space by the foot of the bed, but we couldn't find one. Ugh, I'm not going to go through the whole list, but we couldn't find squat at Target, Bed Bath & Beyond, TJ Max, or Home Depot. It was a lot of walking at least.

I also paid some bills this morning and cleaned off my desk. The house got picked up a bit and Nat did a few others things that really helped the place out.

This post is a little belated, so I'll keep it quick. I had a meet and greet with an employment agency in the morning. It went pretty well, but the current job offer just didn't fit my needs for the moment. A few hours later, I went down to the Carnegie Science Center with Nat. It turns out that the Bodies exhibition won't be in town until October 8th, but we decided to visit anyway. The visit was sort of deflating, as way too much of our memories from middle school visits were still on display. That place sadly needs to update its exhibits. It was fun to visit the Requin though. The Wikipedia article on the Requin let me know just how boring its past had been though.

Later that evening we went out for dinner on the South Side at Piper's Pub. They have this lamb and chestnut stew that is worth crying over.

Today was definitely an off day. Both Nat and I got to bed at a better hour and yet we were both very tired today. I'm not sure what happened, but Nat said that she'd ahd rather miserable dreams about our pending honeymoon trip. Perhaps that left her tossing and turning, impeding my restful sleep.

I didn't feel very productive for most of the day. I couldn't muster the energy. It just felt like... the weekend, I suppose. Since I've been managing my own time for a while, I haven't really had a sharp distinction between days off and days for work. I think that sometimes that leaves me wearied.

In good news, I got call from a recruiting firm that I've met with previously. It's been a few years, but the caller had a job that he was interested in matching me up with. Hopefully it will turn out to be something that's compatible with our lives right now. I'd hate to find out it doesn't work.

As for accomplishments today, there were few. Nat and I went for a short walk in our new area. Unfortunately our fears were confirmed. This area is either blighted or semi-industrial. I miss being able to walk through the pretty houses of all the rich people. It might make me feel angsty on occasion, but at least it was safe and comforting in the main.

The fruits of last night's salvage from the old apartment was unloaded from the car and processed. We're really getting down to things that I just don't know if we really want. I brought over a shoe rack, and now I'll be damned if I can't figure out where to put the thing.

Nat and I hung up our new towel rod and hand-towel hook in the bathroom. While pounding an anchor into the wall, we got a thump from the other side in response. If someone's seriously sleeping at 5:30 PM, then they haven't got any room to complain.

Ah well, I'll be getting to bed at a somewhat decent hour tonight in order to be fresh tomorrow

Natty had a doctor's appointment, where I wound up cooling my heels for an hour. The nice thing was that since we'd gotten going on the early side, we were able to go for a short walk around Mount Lebanon. Continuing the backwards chronology, I'll note that we got an early start because I received my postage-paid box for RMA'ing my Xbox 360. I'm still pretty happy with the system despite it's shortcomings.

After Nat's appointment, we came straight back to the house (still a 45+ minute drive though), where we chilled for a bit. I spent a little time working through SpaceHook's code. A little less than an hour later, we drove back over to our old apartment building, where Natty had a piano lesson. While she was doing that, I worked on either packing or pitching stuff at the old place. Natty's old Jane magazines bit the dust. Although earlier she wished to keep them, we'd agreed it just wasn't worth it. With a little guilt I pitched some stuff like Christmas wrapping paper. It's wasteful to do that, but the cost of buying more paper is heavily outweighed by the relief that comes from not having to deal with it. Hrm, other examples? Our old dubious office chair had been left to Alexandra with the idea that she could either keep it or pitch it. Like way too many other damned things, she instead opted to shove it in the room with the other things that I have to sort out. You would think that she would be a little more helpful with stuff like that, since it's that sort of thing that remains unresolved because the help she'd volunteered canceled on us. I don't think that it's too much to ask for her to practice a little sense. Clue: If made a gift to you of our extra stuff, don't re-gift it back to us. Example: We gave her a box of kitchen-ware. A pan from that box mysteriously wound up among the items we left behind. WOULD IT HAVE BEEN TOO MUCH TO JUST PITCH THE DAMNED THING!? Ugh, I've got enough crap to sort though already.

So anyway, I've been semi-distracted but trying to work on programming today. Aside from the work loss due to distraction, I've also been tweaking a lot of little stuff while I draw up the plans for revamping the whole code.

Well, this has turned all rant-y in here, so I am just going to call it a night.

I'm a little lost in thought. I was just programming in XNA. I added some rudimentary rotation to it, and it's behaving a little oddly. I'm not sure what to make of it. Anyway, it's good that I was programming.

We also dropped by the old apartment to pick up things that we'd set aside and took them down to the Salvation Army. It's kind of odd, but there aren't really any Salvation Army dumpsters near us or any other sort of donation site, so we have to drive to the other side of town practically in order to find a place to drop off stuff. *shrugs* Not that I've particularly researched this.

I constructed a few shoeracks from Target. I think that they might solve our problem with all of Natty's shoeboxes. They're taking up a lot of space which used to be something tolerable, given our last place had big closets.

I finally gathered the camera and it's USB cable at my desk simultaneously and offloaded all of the pics and videos we've taken at the new place here. Hopefully I'll post a privately shared YouTube collection or something. Dunno.

Hrm, what else? Installed my scanner. Natty and I went for a walk around Shadyside. I gathered and took out the trash. Dug through a few boxes and emptied their contents into better storage.

I'm going to try to get to bed at a better time tonight. I think that might have slowed me down again today. I went to bed later than I originally intended last night, because we stayed up ordering the tickets for our honeymoon flight overseas.

Hrm, I think it'll be a short post today, since I've felt rather ADD today. We had a big Target shopping trip, where we bought more storage stuff (yay, somewhere for shoes to go). I vacuumed the upstairs, along with cleaning everything up nicely. We also hit the post office while we were out. Talked with a friend about job prospects at his company. Argh, just spacing out a lot.

I guess today was semi-productive. Not up to what I'd like, but I'm going to accept it for being an off day where some things still got done.

Slow sleepy start.

Studied my curiously high Verizon bill and discovered that Nat's account was in fact not merged with mine. Our bills were consolidated, but they apparently did not put us on a family plan. This was after we stood there for almost TWO FRIGGIN HOURS!!! *sigh* Time to go back to the store.

Paid my car insurance and updated the address. Despite the fact that my car is now parked in a garage instead of on the street, I still have to pay $50 more per pay period. There's just no winning with insurance.

Anya was unusually lovey today. She cuddled up on Nat's lap and meowed for me to pet her. Later on, I rewarded her further meowing by picking her up off of the floor. The typically skittish cat snuggled in my arms and allowed me to pet her for a few minutes, despite the easy exits available as I kneeled near the couch.

Updated electric company info with my bank online and paid the latest bill. Later in the evening I excavated the information necessary to pay the balance remaining on our wedding photography.

I vacuumed the downstairs, not just the rugs, but also places where the tiling or concrete was cracked.

Nat gave me a haircut.

We ran out to Costco. On the way back, I parked at Giant Eagle and we went for a walk around Friendship. Due to the 90s heat, we didn't take a particularly long one though.

Argh, and now the cat has pushed my to-do list off of the desk in a torrid attempt to receive more petting. Thusly I declare this blog post to be hereafter abandoned for the night. Time to pet the cat! Nothing else matters! :)

I need to get back to posting every day, even if it doesn't suit me. The insanity of moving has passed and it's time to get back to focus. I intended to straighten out as of July 5th, but that day was axed due to intestinal discomfort. But I don't know what I was thinking yesterday. I think I was tired, but I can't quite say. I can't procrastinate like this any more. I don't know how to say it properly, though. I'm wary of making an over-reaching statement but I know that discipline is required to reset my goals. I feel like I'm muddying through this rather poorly tonight. Ugh.

Anyway, today I spent some more time sorting through stuff. I found a few boxes I'd overlooked on the bookshelf and cleaned them out. While we went to the grocery store, I ran over to the old place and got the vacuum and my big honkin wheelie thingy full of inherited power tools. I spent an hour or so with programming. I got off to a false start, trying to rewrite the SpaceHook code from scratch. I ditched that angle rather quickly, and turned instead to analyzing the existent code and adding comments to clarify confusing passages or to mark sections that need changed or moved. Some stuff is downright mysterious. Like trying to figure out some weird voodoo math.

Example: The 360 control sticks report X and Y axis values from -1 to 1. The current code ignores the first -0.30 to +0.30, which creates a deadzone against nervous wiggles. Then whatever values are read are reduced by +/- 0.30, resulting in output ranging from -0.70 to +0.70. This seems a little odd to not go to 1, but I can accept it. Then the voodoo kicks in, and my old code takes the remaining value and subtracts the cube of seventy percent of it. WTF? Now cubing a fractional amount will retain the positive or negative status, which is useful for keeping things simple when you're trying to equalize a value towards zero, ie adding to negatives and subtracting from positives. Cubing might also be useful as creating a greater weight against greater values, while leaving lesser amounts untouched. This would make it more sensitive to lesser movements outside the deadzone, while going farther wouldn't go too powerful. But what the hell to the 70%? Matching this up with vague memories of programming while Nat was in the hospital, I can only presume that I fiddled with values until I found something that made the sensitivity feel right. *shrugs*

Anyway, I got my mind working again, and it's very intrigued by coding. Also, I returned to using the legal pad for a to-do list. Hopefully productivity will follow. Sorry about the scatterbrained quality of this post. Later.

Well today marks the start of a return to responsibility. Not the best start though, as my 4th of July libations left me with a bit of intestinal distress. It woke me up a few times last night and has detracted from my productivity today.

Gathered up the trash and recycling and took it out. I registered my broken Xbox 360 for warranty service and then had them send out a box for RMA return. I updated a few addresses online. Approved release of a resume to an inquiring company.

(Post fragment ends here)

Yesterday was a relatively quiet day. We went down to the Waterfront. I set up shelves in the upstairs closet. I emptied a box of small fragile decorative things. I also paid bills. Several trips were made through the building, up and down the stairs, and out into the alley in order to clear out the trash. At the end of the day, I had wished that I'd gotten more done, but I'd felt rather tired in general.

Today I installed a cabinet in the bathroom. I emptied a few boxes of clothes and distributed them. Three boxes were opened, but there were a lot of things that I couldn't put away given that we haven't decided where we're storing everything yet, or even if we have the space without first buying more storage. We also ran out to the South Hills village area, where Nat's mother assisted us in depositing a check that her father gave us to help cover the moving expenses. Since it was made out to him, but signed over to us on the back, they wouldn't accept it carte blanche. We also took a stroll around the mall for a bit. We found a thin wedding band for me to wear on my finger instead of my wider one, which had caused some skin reaction.

Anyway, it's been an alright couple of days. On average I'm satisfied with what I've gotten done, especially because the place just feels cleaner. There are fewer things hanging over my head, which is something to appreciate.

Oh yeah! And today marks the unfortunate demise of the microwave that I'd inherited from my parents upon first moving out. It had been with me in four different homes, but apparently the latest move maleffected the internal circuitry somehow. When we'd hooked it up in the new place here, I had used a slightly dated surge protector to hook it up. While microwaving things two or three times, the surge protector had tripped. I blamed it on the old surge protector, a reaction that was only encouraged by the fact that when I unplugged the damned thing, the grounding pin popped out and remained in the wall socket! The microwave then got plugged in directly into the outlet. This proved to be a problem, because the damned thing blew the circuit breaker that was also powering all of our first floor outlets, ie both of our computers. I reset the breakers, threw out my half-frozen vegetables, and unplugged the microwave for the last time. Nat ordered delivery and we made plans to cash in our 10% discount coupon at Best Buy tomorrow.

There hasn't been too much to report for the last few days that I'd find worth noting. It's just been the continual struggle for us to convert to living in a smaller, more-vertical space. Also, today we drove up to see my family. Both my brother and sister were their with their kids. It was a great day. Nat had a lot of fun with the kids, taking charge of them and playing for almost the whole time. My mother commented how she wouldn't have the patience that Nat was showing with the kids. I think today my family learned that my wife is good with kids... now let us just hope that they don't expect us to have any soon!

Anyway, tomorrow will attempt to be a day of furniture construction and establishing further organization.