First week of August

Lots of stuff going on this week. I thought I'd smash them all into one post:

1) Soccer started! We had our first practice on Tuesday. LilKat2's team was first, followed immediately by LilKat1. You know what? Running 2 soccer practices back-to-back takes a lot out of you! Especially when it's hot. The dinner schedule on soccer nights is a little crazy, we end up eating in shifts. But it was a lot of fun. We have our second practice today. I think it's going to be hot again, so I'm going to break out the dribble-the-ball-quickly-to-the-other-side-before-I-pummel-you-with-my-water-squirter game.

2) Got some free money at Costco yesterday! Mrs. BigKat and I had our weekly date night last night, and after we ate, we ended up at Costco (I know, Costco doesn't sound like a great date night, but we actually really enjoy walking around a store with no children. A lot). Earlier this summer, we bought a new tv. It's a nice tv, but just a shade too big for the space that we put it in. Mrs. BigKat wanted to see the tv that was a size smaller. We went to the tv section to take a look, and we noticed that our current tv was listed with a $100 rebate. After we were done shopping, I went to the customer service desk to find out if I could get the rebate for my earlier purchase. The lady said that it would be fine, but only if I bought my tv in the last 30 days. We went home, and I checked my receipt. 30 days! Perfect...no wait...there's 31 days in July...oops! 31 days! Not so perfect! I went back to Costco and saw the same lady and asked if it was ok even though I bought the tv 31 days ago. She asked her manager, and he said it was fine. Woo hoo! She handed me a $100 and off I went. Free money!

3) So last week, I ordered a big pile of games. Well, it turns out that the place I ordered from ran out of games, so they canceled my order. Which actually worked out nice because it saved me a lot of money! To celebrate my good fortune, I ordered a different big pile of games from Boards and Bits, one of my very favorite places to buy games. Here's what I got:

1. Taluva - A cool tile laying game where you build up a little island with volcanoes and stuff.
2. Ubongo das Duell - Another game in the Ubongo series. It's a puzzle game where you have to figure out the right way to fit these tetris-like pieces together. But this version is really hard! It uses crazy, monstrous, misfigured tetris pieces! And there's lots of them!
3. Roma - I've been wanting this for a while, but I've read that a new version was going to come out soon. Well, I couldn't take it any longer and just bought the old version. It's a 2 player card game that uses dice in an interesting way. Looks like a lot of fun.
4. Thebes - I got this mainly for game nights with my mom. She doesn't like it that I win so much, so I thought this would be a great game for us because it adds in a bit of a luck factor. It's an archeology game, where you travel to various places around the world in search of ancient artifacts. Part of the skill of the game involves doing your research so that you have the best chance to find something good. But in the end, even if you've done your homework, it's always possible that all you find is a big pile of dirt. This one looks like a very well made game, and I can't wait to try it out.
5. Scripts and Scribes - This game was the equivalent of standing in line at the grocery store, seeing a Whatchamacallit in the candy bin, and buying it even though you're not sure what it is, but it just looks kind of tasty. I hadn't heard of this game before, and I just saw it on the Boards and Bits website as I was about to check out. I researched it a bit and it looked pretty good. A lot of comparisons to For Sale, another game I like quite a bit. Always nice to have a game that you can play in just 10 or 20 minutes when you don't have time for a big game.
6. Mykerinos - We actually got to play this last night. What a great game! Another archeology game, although the theme doesn't seem as quite as important as in Thebes. It's really more of an abstract puzzle type game. You place cubes down on the excavation sites and try to control areas while blocking everyone else out. If you win a region, you get a card, which not only helps your score, but gives you special abilities in later rounds. Pretty simple, right? Well, there's a whole seperate component that you need to keep in mind: the museum. When you win a region, you have a choice of collecting a card, or getting a spot in the museum. Ignore the museum and your cards will not be worth that much at the end of the game. Focus too much on the museum and you won't have enough cards to gain control of the board. Also, you need to keep in mind when to save your resources for later rounds, and when to get as much as you can during the current round. This was really a fun game. Even as we were getting ready for bed, I kept muttering 'What a fun game!' It's funny, because the game itself it really small. The board is tiny, the pieces are tiny, the box is tiny. But the game itself is quite substantial. This one is one of my new favorites. The only problem with this game is that I don't know how to pronounce the name correctly...

4) My Friend Who Lies (MFWL) is getting married tomorrow. The wedding is at the beach. I'm taking the boys with me. They're very excited. This will be their first time at the beach ever! They've been wanting to go to a beach for so long.

5) My computer has been broken in one form or another for the past 2 weeks (ranging from 'Can't start SQL Server' to 'Can't run Windows in Safe Mode' to 'Randomly shutting down at some point during the day'). 3 video cards, 2 motherboards, 2 lcd's, a power supply and about 16 hours on the phone with tech support later, everything seems to be working fine again. Thank goodness!

More from California

Oh, one more thing about my trip to California. The other developer in my old company is retiring, so I get the privilege of taking over his code. He developed applications using Visual Basic 6.0. In case you didn't know, VB 6 was released about 10 years ago. 10 years ago! And he wrote everything procedurally. No design patterns, no object oriented anything. Direct, low level database calls. You can't use SQL in his apps. He didn't even use source control! So one thing I did when I was down in California was to get a knowledge transfer from him about all the stuff that he was working on. I also got to try my hand at making some changes in his applications. Want to know what it feels like to work on his code? Something kinda like this:

Back from California

I had to go down to California this week for work. I left Monday and came back Thursday. Here are several things about my trip:

• I work at home, so I haven't had to go to a meeting for a long time. Turns out they're still boring.
• My hotel was pretty nice. I actually had the best hotel sleep I think I've ever had.
• One thing that I liked about my hotel stay was that I could pretty much take as many showers as I wanted. There was unlimited hot water, and I didn't have to wait for it to heat up. I checked in at the hotel at 5pm on Monday and checked out at 8am on Wednesday, so about 39 hours total. In that time, I took 5 showers.
• If I was single and had no kids, I think I would be in pretty good shape. I didn't have a lot to do when I wasn't working, so I ended up swimming and lifting weights. I think I may have done more weight training in those 39 hours at the hotel than I have in the last month.
• My rental car was a not-so-new black Mercury Grand Marquis. It was very much an old man car. I felt like I needed a big cigar, a set of golf clubs in the back, and some black dress socks with my tennis shoes.
• I got to stop by our old church briefly. We really miss our old church. Right when I walked in the doors, I felt very comfortable. It's a much different feeling than I get at our current church, even though we've been going there for 5 years now. I saw the pastor and got to talk to him for about 15 minutes. It was great seeing him again. They had just finished their first day of Vacation Bible School, which is always an adventure. He showed me some of the changes that they'd made to the building and updated me on some of the new things that were going on. Even though it was only for a little while, I was glad I was able to visit.
  
• I found out on the phone that LilKat1 got his first loose tooth. I was a little sad that I wasn't there when he first discovered it.
• It sounds like LilKat1 missed me the most of everyone. Mrs. BigKat said he whimpered himself to sleep on Wednesday. That made me sad too.
• Mrs. BigKat says that my cat Darrel missed me as well. Sometime Wednesday, he just started wandering around the house crying.
  
• I got a 'Continental Breakfast' on both Tuesday and Wednesday morning at the hotel. Turns out that they cheated me out of some food on Tuesday. I got whole wheat toast (it was supposed to be a croissant, but I had them switch it), a muffin (it was supposed to be a scone, but I like muffins, so it's fine), a bowl of fruit, a bowl of plain yogurt (I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do with this. Do people really eat just plain yogurt? Well, that's what I did...), and orange juice. I found out on Wednesday that I was also supposed to get a bowl of Special K! They cheated me out of my Special K!
• I got to visit a friend on Tuesday evening. She gave me the directions to her place, but told me not to go in the front door. There's a basement living unit under the house, which she rents out, and the entrance is in the back. I found her street pretty easily and looked for the house number, 145. I parked at the house and got out. There was a car in the garage, but it wasn't hers, so it looked like she wasn't home yet. I started to head up the walk to the front door and saw the little path that went to the back. I followed it around the house, but couldn't see any basement units. There was a back door, but that looked like it went to the main floor. Then I saw a little tiny house in the back. I figured that must be it, so I went over to check it out. I looked through the window and saw a Weber grill and some other supplies. It was clearly a shed. Now, I was confused. My spider-sense was going off a bit, so I went out to the front yard and called my friend on the phone. She answered and said that she was about 15 seconds away from her street and she'd be right there. I saw her pull up the street. She waved at me as she drove by. She then proceeded to pass me up and pull into the driveway on the other side of the street. At house number 1-5-4! Oops! So yeah, basically I went into some strange people's backyard while they were home and just started looking in windows and snooping around.
• I had brought a pack of Rolo's with me on my trip. I thought I would eat them while I was on the plane but I didn't. Tuesday evening, when I saw my friend, I noticed that I had left them in the car. I picked them up and the whole roll was very squishy. When I got back to my hotel, I left them on the table in hopes that they would firm up by themselves again. It worked! But the next day, I had to drive out to Sacramento and they got squishy again. I visited some other friends after my meeting in Sacramento and left the Rolo's on the table to firm up yet again. I was going to open them the next day sometime, but my friend that I was visiting made me open them right there. Rolo's are his favorite candy, and he was having a hard time looking at the package of hard-soft-hard-soft-hard Rolo's on his kitchen table without being able to eat any. I carefully took off the foil and inside was a giant Rolo log. It broke apart pretty easily at the joints where the individual Rolo's met. So I got half and he got half and everyone was happy. But it was the strangest Rolo I've ever eaten.
  
• However, that experience led me to the conclusion that if they ever decided to produce a Rolo bar, I'd buy it.
• My friends in Sacramento that I visited live at the end of a street. Past the end of the street is just a big field of nothing. Just some tall brown grassy plants. I asked my friend if he'd ever just stood on his lawn and whacked golf balls into the field. He stared at me for a second and said 'That's the best idea I've ever heard! Let's go!' So we got his clubs out and whacked a few. Pretty fun! He's got his own personal driving range!
• It was nice being able to catch up with my friends again. We miss being able to talk with them. Although we'd be able to talk with them more if they answered their phones! (Yeah, you guys! I see you reading this! You know who I'm talking about! Answer your phones!)
  
• LilKat2 accidentally let Darrel (the cat that missed me) out of the house. Mrs. BigKat and the boys were all planting stuff in the backyard. LilKat2 went out through the garage door and left it open. Darrel escaped and they couldn't find him for a while. Mrs. BigKat eventually found him in our neighbor's yard. My mom came over for dinner that night and LilKat2 HAD to tell her what happened. He looked her straight in the eyes and started talking in his I'm-really-serious voice. It went something like this:

Grandma...I have something IMPORTANT to tell you...Something REALLY BAD happened..REALLY BAD...This is very IMPORTANT...

(pause)

Darrell got OUT!...I left the garage door open and Darrel got OUT!...Isn't that so BAD?

• So I think LilKat2's not going to need the take-responsibility-for-your-actions talk for a while. He seems to have it down pretty good on his own.
• It takes about $16 in gas to drive my truck from my house to the airport and back.
• I really don't like traveling. Everyone in my family is much happier that I'm home now. I hope I don't have to do this again for a while.
  

New Job

So last week, I started a new job. I had been working for my old company for a little over 6 years. It was a pretty good run. They let me work at home. I didn't have long hours. I always figured that at some point I'd have to get a 'real' job.

Well, looks like I may have been wrong! My old company was actually acquired. So now I'm pretty much doing the same stuff, but for a bigger company. It looks pretty good so far. I'm still working at home. I'm actually getting paid a bit more. And we have much better benefits (the BigKat's finally have dental plan! Woo Hoo!!!).

So we'll see how it goes. I get to go down and meet with all of the new people in a few weeks. If all goes well, I'll never have to get a real job ever again! Yay!

Working at Home

Why I like working at home: Reason #119

I just had an afternoon snack consisting of a Diet Pepsi and a slice of bacon. Try getting that from a vending machine!

Boring Work Post

Well, I know that I said (about an hour ago) that I would try to not have any boring work stuff on here...but I suddenly feel the need to write about some boring work stuff. So here we go!

I have a new workstation that I'm using. My company is quite cheap, so I've been using the same old desktop workstation for the past 5 years. Needless to say, it is quite SSSSSSSSLLLLOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOWWWWW... Well, I was very pleased when I found out that my boss was going to spring for a new computer. And a laptop at that! I'm in the process of moving all my apps from the old computer to the new one. I just got my wireless network working (which is why I'm typing from my backyard right now!). Everything's been great! Except for one thing...I couldn't make any ASP.Net web applications! Which is bad because...well, that's part of my job. I kept getting these goofy errors that didn't make any sense. Anyhow, to make a long story short, after much Googling, I used this and this to get it up and running again. Only took me 2 and a half days! Yay! Anyhow, if you do this sort of thing for a living, then you might want to store the information in the back of your brain in case you have a 'Class not registered' kind of day. If not, then well, you just wasted about a minute of your life reading useless information. Sorry about that!