Have I been playing too much?

I will admit, I am absolutely in love with F-Zero GX. The series has always been a huge time sink for me as I was always trying to better someone else's, but in most cases my own, records. Between Shane and I we've unlocked the Diamond Cup, Master Class, all the buy-able cars (not including the AX cars), and a couple of the story mode missions. We've actually played so much that we've actually crashed the cube on more than one occasion. The first time I got presented with this screen I did a double take. Thankfully it was just a matter of restarting the cube and I could get back to my insanely fast driving.

When I'm not playing F-Zero, I've been working on Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced. It's everything I could have hoped for since I found out they were making another tactics game. That's not to say it is not without its faults (the law system is just starting to get on my nerves), but it is definitely on par with what I've come to expect from Square-Enix. I plan on bringing my GBA with me on the trip to Vegas, which will actually be the first time I've used my GBA since I got the Gameboy Player.

It was fun while it lasted

Shane's in the process of moving back in with Sarah in Sommerville. It's been good to be able to split expenses as long as I have, but I always new that it was a temporary arrangement. I don't think I'll try to fill the room with another preson. I don't want to take a chance on a crappy roommate. I'll just use the money I've saved up while Shane was living here to pay off a little more credit debt and then convert the empty room to a guest room over time. I plan on staying here a while, so there's no sense in just leaving it empty.

3x Thursday: Killing in the name of....

Missy's been coming up with some thought provokers lately:

1. What do you think about the US military calling in more troops to Iraq? Do you think it's necessary?
   Unfortunately Dubya put our military in a real tough position. He sent them in without UN support, so our boys (and gals) are the only ones out there right now. There simply aren't enough of them over there to allow for the kind of mission they're undertaking, not too mention they don't have the ability to rotate off the front lines.
2. Do you know anyone that has gotten mobilized? What did you think? How did it affect you?
   Some kids from high school that I was only acquainted with were called up so I said "that sucks". No one real close to me was called up, but if they were I'd probably be like everyone else and constantly have thoughts in the back of my head about if they're OK or not.
3. It seems as if the military has gone apeshit since 9/11/2001. Do you support the ideologies and actions of the US military since that time?
   I'm a little tired of us being the world bully. I think our troops could be better used by protecting our borders.

Bonus Question for Comments: What would you think/do if it was you that was called into action?
Well, I'm already too old, and I have a disability, so I'd never actually be called up. If I was though, I would do my duty and go serve. My father was a marine in Vietnam, so I've always had a very strong sense of patriotic duty should the need arise.

Now that was a stupendous waste of time

So a while back I talked about how I was having issues with migrating my company's application to Oracle9i. Well when I wrote that, I thought I was done with all the issues. About a week later, QA came over to tell me that they were seeing a crash on Solaris. I spent 2 weeks trying to figure out the problem. I knew it was coming from the Oracle libraries, but I wasn't sure if it had to do with some combination of Oracle and Solaris we were running. Again I tried talking to the people at Oracle, and again they were of little to no help.

Finally today, the guys at Oracle asked me to send them a trace of the listener and the client session. So I set up the trace, but noticed that the data in the file was messed up. There were just a bunch of errors about not being able to find messages. Having seen this before, I set the ORACLE_HOME environment variable and tried to run the trace again, but this time the application didn't crash. I didn't believe it at first, so I unset the variable; the application crashed; I reset the variable; no crash. An application should NOT crash because an environment variable isn't set, an error message sure, but it shouldn't crash. So needless to say, I'm glad to have that monkey off my back again, but I'm really starting to dislike Oracle.

A busy weekend

This past weekend was rather busy. I only ended up at my apartment to sleep. Friday night I headed down to Boston to go see Underworld with my friends from NU (take my advice, wait for video). We had a few beers at Boston Billiards and we were all on our cell phones trying to get Red Sox playoff tickets. We couldn't get through for about 30 minutes before we gave up and got a pool table. After the movie, I made my way back to Nashua to go to sleep.

When I got up Saturday, I had some breakfast and then headed back down to Boston to hang out with Shane and Sarah. We went over to the Commons to check out the Freedom Rally. It was rather hot, and there wasn't all that much to do there besides check out some vendors so we bagged that idea and went for some dinner in Arlington before playing a little frisbee in Fresh Pond Park. After I got home that evening, I took a quick shower then headed over to my friend Michael's parents' place in Merrimack. He and his fiance, Sabrina, had a few people over for some drinking and assorted fun. I ended up getting home at around 2:30AM.

When I finally managed to get up on Sunday, I met up with my mom at Best Buy because she and dad were getting a new Receiver. The one they have is probably 15 years old at this point, so it was about time. She picked out a good Sony unit and we brought back to the house and I hooked it up for them and did my laundry at the same time. Dad's got Sunday Ticket, so I took full advantage of that to get my Sunday fill of football (the Pats looked sluggish, but a win is a win). After a good dinner, I finally headed back to my apartment and watched the late night game on ESPN before falling asleep.

This week should hopefully be less stressful. The "critical" pile is gone, and the "need to do soon" pile is getting smaller and smaller so I can finally start to work on the stuff that's 5-6 months out. The things I do to collect a paycheck...

3x Thursday: Politicking

Thanks once again to Missy:

1. Even tho it's been postponed, how do you feel about the CA recall election?
   I have no problem with the idea of recall elections, but I do think that Davis' opponents should have had to make a better case to get the movement off the ground. Recalls should be reserved for egregious actions like going against campaign promises. Now the thing has turned into a 3-ring circus and in the end it will do very little to help California dig itself out of the hole it's in.
2. Are recall elections a good thing? Why/Why not? What about a presidential recall election?
   See above. Recalls, in my opinion, become more valuable as the term of the office is extended. Recalling House reps would be futile as they're only there for 2 years anyway, but the Senate term is 6 years so there could be a real benefit to recalling a senator that no longer represents his constituency. Presidential recall? The cost would be way to prohibitive to make this worthwhile.
3. Should celebrities be allowed to run for office? Does their fame make them good candidates?
   Anyone who's qualified to run for office should be able to, and the only qualifications that I feel that are important are residency status and age. Celebrities, especially in recent years, seem to think their fame is a reason for us to listen to their political views, but in the end if they don't have the popular view they don't make good candidates. Jesse Ventura used his fame and his position as a government outsider (yes he was Mayor of his town for two terms, but nothing else) to counter-balance the Republican and Democratic candidates. In the end, a lot of Minnesota voters picked him because they recognized his name and were tired of the same old politics.

Bonus: If you could pick one thing that's wrong with politics today, what is it, and how would you fix it?
The rampant problems with campaign finance. First and foremost I would remove any party's ability to raise funds. Instead, voters can contribute to a campaign fund that is then distributed equally to each party based on the number of candidates running for office. Individual campaigns will still be able to raise money, but they will only receive X amount of dollars from the party. This would basically remove any advantage the Republicans and Democrats have over the "third parties". The 2 majors won't be able to just simply dump money into a campaign they feel they need to win.

On another note, this is the 100th post to the main blog. Only took 3 years!

Could I please have my sanity back?

So I haven't posted much to the main blog lately, though I did manage to put up some new links and a new review. It's due at least in part to much more work than I usually have to do. The company I work for is small enough that everyone has to wear multiple hats. Well I also have to work on multiple concurrent releases of our products, so when things go wrong on every release I'm working on, in various areas that I'm responsible for, I tend to get overwhelmed. I'll have 3 things that are "urgent", 2 things that aren't urgent but need to be done in a short time frame, then a pile of stuff that has a long time frame. The real problem arises when the urgent pile grows faster than I can handle it.

All that work usually means the last thing I want to do when I get home is even look at my computer. The end result of course is no updates. I need to get into a better habit of posting at the end of the day, but I'm not quite there yet. At the moment I post when the urge strikes me, or when I see a lot of empty space on the MT calendar (like today). But I think what I really need is some sense of sanity back to my day. Work is in a down cycle, so I can go home with some "fuel left in the tank" so I can stand to look at my computer when I get home.

3x Thursday: Star Wars Mania

Once again, from Missy:

1. If you could be any Star Wars character, who would it be? Why?
   Vader, without a doubt. The most powerful Jedi ever, who brought balance back to the force. (that was one thing that I really liked about the prequels, was that the prophecy was about balance, but for some reason everyone on the council seemed to think this was a good thing. Balance means each side is equal... DUH!)
2. Which are better; 4, 5, and 6, or 1 and 2 (soon to be 3)? Why? Out of the 5, which is your absolute favorite?
   The original trilogy is better without question. Lucas has been trying too hard with Episodes 1 and 2, plus none of the movies he's actually directed in the series have been all that great (A New Hope was a pretty lousy movie all things considered). That being said, Empire has always been my favorite, I've never been a huge fan of happily ever after movies.
3. How do you think Episode 3 will turn out? Will it be like 1 and 2, or will it properly set up Episodes 4, 5, and 6?
   I have hopes for Episode 3. In theory, this will be the turning of Anakin, the destruction of the Jedi Council, the rise of Palpatine as Emperor. If Lucas doesn't fuck it up (which I fear he will) it will overtake Empire as my favorite of the series.

Bonus: What's your favorite Star Wars line? (it can be any of the 5 movies that are out)
"Wedge, pull out! You're not doing any good back there!"
"Might I suggest a new strategy R2; let the Wookie win."

I am definitely ready for some football

As I'm writing this I'm watching the Jets and Redskins playing on NFL's season opener. This is the second season the NFL has had an opening night seperate from the first weeekend. I think that it was the best and worst thing that has happened to football. The benefits are of course that because there is only 1 game on opening night, there can be more pagentry. The problem is the pagentry they chose. This year's opener was headlined by Mary J Blige and Britney Spears. Now I'm no demographics expert, but I'd be willing to bet that the people that are watching football don't want to see those two. But I suppose that's the point, to get more people to watch, sort of like the Super Bowl half time shows.

Of course this game has some significance to me, the Jets are in the Patriots division, but to me the season won't start until Tom and the boys play in Buffalo. Of course now that Lawyer Milloy has signed with the Bills, the game has even more intrigue. Here's to the beginning of best 4 months of year.

3x Thursday: Chores

Missy got these up early this week, so I'll get to them early:

1. When you were a kid, did you have chores? What were they? Did you get paid for them?
   As a kid I actually had very few regular chores. My mom let me get by with just mowing the lawn in the summer, shoveling the driveway in the winter, and making sure my room was clean. I had an allowance for lunches and other expenses, this usually lead to me not eating very much at lunch so I had money to do other things.
2. Now that you're all growed up, what about cleanliness in your own house? Are you good at cleaning up the house?
   I try to do some cleaning every week so as it never gets too bad. I'll pick one room a week to focus on. Every once in a while though I'll get behind and the place will look like a sty and I'll have to spend half of my Saturday or Sunday cleaning everything (just did this last weekend).
3. What do you absolutly *hate* to clean in your house?
   Well I hate to clean anything if I haven't cleaned it in a while. That's why I try to do a little bit all the time, so it doesn't bother me nearly as much.

Bonus: If you could hire a maid, would you? Why/why not?
I would if I had a bigger space. A two bedroom apartment is not that hard to maintain. If I had any more though, I would seriously consider a maid service.

A great discussion

Abbreviated transcript of a conversation I had with Dave after talking about our love-lives, or lack there of:

Me: why can't I find normal girls?
Dave: 1. they don't exist
Dave: 2. if they did, they'd be boring
Me: you know Dave, when you're right, you're right
Dave: hahaha
Dave: I try
Dave: but, yeah, I've come to accept the truth
Me: ?
Dave: unless a girl has a seriously fucked up past, I'm just not interested
Me: hahahahaha
Me: I laugh because I think I have the same problem
Dave: see, Bob
Dave: normal girls like things like Britney, and mainstream music
Dave: they think cheerleading is a sport
Dave: they say shit like "Why can't I find a guy like you?"
Dave: and frankly, I don't want that
Me: yeah, you and I have seen enough of that shit to last a million life times

But really, I'm not bitter... honest...

The final cord has been cut

So it's only taken a year, but I'm finally financially clear of my parents. Obviously when I was in school I was covered by my parents insurance (both medical and car). They also footed the bill for my cell phone for the first 3 years I had it (I originally didn't want one, but since they offered to pay I got it). Eventually I wanted to get a new phone and the best deals meant getting a new plan. So I signed up through Let's Talk, and got a phone for $50 and got a $50 rebate for signing a one-year contract, and other for trading in my old phone. They actually gave me money to get a new phone! It ended up being perfect timing, because not 1 week after I ordered my new phone, my parents got new phones, which again meant getting a new plan.

When I got my full-time position at Softech (then it was still Workgroup Technology Corp), I got health coverage through the company, but my car insurance policy through my parents still had a few months left on it. Of course, I lost my job before the policy was to expire, and with my job opportunities slim to none it looked like I might have to move back to Merrimack. So my parents renewed my policy through their carrier. Well. that policy expires as of the 19th of the month, at which point my policy through Geico will kick in. At that point I will no longer have a financial obligation to my parents. I've always considered myself fairly independent, but I would always lean on my parents from time to time, so it's nice to remove the last of the financial crutches I was leaning on. That doesn't mean I won't still go over there to do free laundry though...