Went to the Lost Planet launch party tonight. Wasn’t really sure *why* necessarily, other than it was something to do. Figured maybe I’d make some contacts or something, but it wasn’t that sort of thing at all. I stood in line for about fifteen minutes, though, before finding some people from Backbone, and so we got into the VIP lounge, which was sort of funny. Lots of other game people, and “journalists,” but not really much in the way of talking to people. Just not that kind of event. Very much a “press” event, to show how excited the masses are for the game, and indeed, there were a lot of people. It was a fun time – I hung out primarily with a friend of mine from work, picked up a copy of the CE version of the game, and got it signed by some of the creators, which for some reason, was still pretty entertaining.

That list, and the resulting discussion that’s popped up about high school made me feel like reflecting for a moment.

I have no love for my high school. I largely hated my high school experience. College, I’m somewhat ambivalent about. But we’ll get to that later.

The defining quality of my high school is that it’s a relatively small school in an incredibly affluent neighborhood. Half the town of Piedmont is spectacularly wealthy, the other half is firmly ensconsed in upper-middle-class. The school feeds in from a middle school, which is in turn fed by three elementary schools. If you started one of those three elementary schools, there’s a very good chance that 80+% of your class made it all the way to senior year of high school with you.

So, once an X, always an X. Did something ridiculous in 3rd grade? People still remember. Maybe they don’t remember the exact event, but it doesn’t matter. If you’re in the in-crowd, you’re in. If you’re not, you’re not, and it doesn’t change. That’s not to say that I did something idiotic in 1st grade that I regretted in 12th.

I have great friends – better than I could ever hope for, that came from my experience throughout that school system. Hell, one of my current housemates, I met in kindergarten. We’ve known each other *forever*. A fistful of my other friends I met along the way. Some when the elementary schools merged in middle school, and some I even became friends with after it was all over, just because of peripheral connections that remained.

That said, the group of people I’m close with now aren’t, by and large, the group that I was close to in high school. Why? I wasn’t really close to that many people. Pete, Sean, and a couple others, but in high school, I didn’t really hang out with anyone except the swim team, and even then, I always felt like a bit of an outsider.

In part, that was because I did a *lot* of extracurricular stuff. I was in the band/orchestra, so I’d perform in the pit during the high school musicals. I swam, and played water polo, I played tennis (you know, I totally forgot about that) for a good part of middle school – not on a team, just took private lessons with my mom’s instructor. I took piano, saxophone, and clarinet lessons, and basically was always doing something or another. It was immensely educational, but it meant that I never really “stuck” with a single group, and never formed really tight friendships with a large group.

The track team, where most of my current highschool-era friends hung out, was really tight. The swim team was close, but aside from Sean, and a few people to a much lesser extent, I don’t have any friendships that have lasted beyond that. Which is fine – I burned a couple bridges pretty severely at the very end of senior year. Not something I’m really all that proud of, but I can’t say I’d do it differently, even now. The stupidity of the righteous, I guess.

I also took some classes at Berkeley, which I went to with Patrick and Pete. Pete was a really good friend of mine. One of my best, if not the best friend I had in high school, and someone I still consider one of my very best friends, though I see him quite rarely. That was another source of discontinuity, I suppose.

Bleah.

Still – I can’t really complain. Like I said, I did have a couple really good friends, which are friendships that have lasted to this day. But I despised most of my high school. The whole social atmosphere was incredibly cliquish and oppressive.

College was different. There were vast swaths of it I genuinely loved. The place I lived was awesome, and there were some incredibly, wildly creative and intelligent people, the likes of which I’ll never experience in that sort of density ever again. The problem, for me, was that essentially because we all lived together, the 30 people I knew formed a very… incestuous group of friends. By that, I mean that though each of my 30 friends had 30 friends, it was the same 30 people. Over and over.

MIT has a really interesting dichotomy – or it used to, at least. East Campus had the super-liberal, experimental, weird, creative crowd. West Campus generally housed the more conservative types. Each side looked down their nose at the other. Thing was, by senior year, I was kind of fed up with the East Campus-style scene. It just drove me bonkers. I was sick of the “HEY! LOOK HOW WEIRD I AM! ISN’T IT AWESOME!?!?!?” attitude that pervaded a lot of that scene, and frankly, I’m not *that* weird. When it gets right down to it, I’m generally relatively reserved, and staid, in my social life, and as a result, I really was looking for something less… loud.

So, senior year, I started hanging out with some friends from West Campus, and wondered why there was such a fucked up dichotomy to it all. But those worlds didn’t blend well, and I found myself sort of split in two, again. No, I’m not saying this is an experience unique to me. God, no. But it breaks the *time* that you spend with a group in two, and things suffer, as a result.

I also had a relationship that dragged me to Harvard for a good portion of my time for two years of my school experience, then had a huge crush on someone who was unavailable, before meeting the love of my life. Relationships, undoubtedly, colored a lot of my experience at MIT, because when you’re hosed on a bunch of problem sets, and trying to juggle your time to split it between MIT and Harvard, everything gets a little bonkers. Again, it’s all a matter of breaking up your time into chunks that are too small, and trying to spread them too thin.

Maybe that’s why these days, I so enjoy spending huge chunks of time at home, relaxing – doing nothing, hanging out. Not heading off to this party or that one, or frantically squeezing in as many people as possible.

At this point, I think I have a good group of friends. Some of them have known me for 20+ years, some of them I’ve met only in the last six or seven. I wish, as always, that I had more time to spend with some of them, and some friends go for far too long without contact. I know it’s my fault, as much as anyone else’s, but I’m enjoying the quiet times.

via Dre & Niralth

Your senior year in High School is supposed to be “the best year of your life.” Let’s see how much you remember. I know for some it might be hard for you to go back that far!

Year: 1994
1.) Who was your best friend?
Sean or Pete, probably.
2.) What sports did you play?
I swam. Played water polo, as well.
3.) What kind of car did you drive?
My parents’ 1984 Toyota Camry.
4.) It’s Friday night, where were you?
Either something band-related, or swimming-related.
5.) Were you a party animal?
No.
6.) Were you in the “In Crowd”?
Not by a longshot.
7.) Ever skip school?
No… not high school classes, at least. Pete & I probably skipped a few UCB math classes to play Mortal Kombat 2, though.
8.) Ever smoke?
Not then, not since, not ever.
9.) Were you a nerd?
I guess.
10.) Did you get suspended/expelled?
Nope.
11.) Can you sing the Alma Mater?
We had a song?
12.) Who was your favorite teacher?
Uh… hm. Tom Cochrane, though that was my junior year. Senior year, maybe Mr. Sands, the English teacher?
13.) Favorite Class?
I didn’t particularly like any of ’em.
14.) What was your school’s full name?
Piedmont High School
15.) School Mascot?
A guy in a kilt.
16.) Did you go to Prom?
Yes.
17.) If you could go back and do it over, would you?
I dunno. Maybe? There are things I’d definitely have done differently, but I don’t know that I’d trade what I’ve got to do things again.
18.) What do you remember most about graduation?
Nothing in particular, really. Graduation was pretty meaningless, for me.
19.) Favorite memory of your Senior Year?
First kisses count? I don’t see why they wouldn’t. Yeah, it was senior year. Shaddap.
20.) Were you ever posted up on the senior wall?
The what, now?
21.) Did you have a job your senior year?
Lifeguard at the Piedmont pool.
22.) Who did you date?
Not gonna post someone’s name without their permission. AC.
23.) Where did you go most often for lunch?
When I was at school, I’d eat stuff from home. When we went to Berkeley, probably LaVals.
24.) HAve you gained weight since then?
Yeah. 50 lbs. Yatz.
25.) What did you do after graduation?
Swam, worked, not much else, really. College, then work.

So, Beemer’s in town. Went over to Tortuga to hang out, and play some games. We ended up playing something called “At Wit’s End”, which is pretty much like Trivial Pursuit, but with different types of questions. The board structure’s somewhat different, but not in a way that seemed to really matter (though some cards have ‘side effects’ that can change the course of the game pretty severely). Fun times. Beemer asked why I haven’t been posting very much, and the answer’s sort of sad – not much is really going on. On a day to day basis, there just isn’t a lot of interesting stuff.

I mean, okay, so there’s the diet thing, which I’d been doing pretty well on. Today was a bit of a ‘setback’ in the sense that I ended up eating a huge-ass steak, ’cause we bought a ribeye at Safeway, and the thing was freakin’ ENORMOUS. Still, it’s one of the better steaks I’ve ever cooked, Ei-Nyung and I split it, and she wisely kept half of her half for lunch tomorrow. I wish I’d done the same, but my eyes were bigger than my stomach. Oh, well. Tomorrow morning, I hit the pool, so I’ll just have to swim a little harder. By and large, I’ve been able to stop with random snacking, I’ve been making myself a little something for breakfast, and I’ve been bringing in lunch every day for the last week or so.

So, that’s been going reasonably well. Not terribly interesting or anything, but there you go.

Finished Rainbow Six: Vegas, and was pleasantly surprised by how good it was. The developers have really streamlined the squad mechanics to the point where they actually feel like a help, rather than a hiderance. Not once in the game did I ever feel like they were “stupid” or that they made the game worse. In fact, being able to quickly and simply direct them around, and the way the levels were designed, the teammates added a level of strategy that wouldn’t have been present otherwise. Very impressive.

One of the things that I found was interesting was that (mild spoilers coming) the game’s not structured as a standalone story. Sure, it has an arc of its own, and interesting things happen. But the overall structure *clearly* puts this as the beginning of a series of games – to the point where when Vegas 2 comes out, I’d suspect that they’ll have to have some “Previously, on Battlestar Galactica” style segment to bring people up to speed. Not that it’s deep, or overly complex – merely that it’s clear that the story from Vegas will continue into the next game as though that was how it was designed from the start.

Given Ubisoft’s pretty well annual (or shorter) schedules for their major franchises, this actually comes to me as a welcome change. It’s like they’re taking the positives of episodic gaming, and combining those with the epic production values of a “standalone” game, in a way that I haven’t really seen previously.

I mean, sure Halo -> Halo 2, but Halo had an “end” that felt like an end. Halo 2’s cliffhanger didn’t even feel quite the same. Vegas’ ending simply sets you up for the next chapter. It’s more like “Insert Disc 2” rather than “Coming Soon: Rainbow Six Vegas 2 (which is a pretty stupid name, but then again, they shipped a game called Rainbow Six 3, so there you go)”.

Anyway – I’m glad to see some sort of narrative linkup between the annual installments of these games. I’d even like it if the Splinter Cell series and Rainbow Six had some narrative crossover, where appropriate.

Anyway. It was good to see Beemer, and hang out with the rest of the peeps at Tortuga. Gotta get out of the house more – maybe then I’ll have more things to blog about, eh? Anyway. Off to sleep. Gotta get to the pool in the morning.

Woke up at 7:45, hit the alarm, and slept ’till 9, after going to sleep at about 3am. We had a bunch of people over for a night of food, Guitar Hero, and Karaoke Revolution. No better way to ring in the new year that laughing at your friends making fools of themselves. It was a really great night – the kind of thing we haven’t done in ages, and I wish we did more often.

I felt like I had a hangover, this morning, despite not having anything to drink the night before. So, while Ei-Nyung took the dog out for a quick walk, I stared at a wall, trying not to fall back asleep, or otherwise incapacitate myself. By about 10:15, I’d gotten my head together, and we went out to meet U, A&B for Dim Sum at Jade Villa, in Oakland Chinatown.

Oh – rewind a touch. The night before, K & I had made a wager – we’d both resolved to lose ~20lbs. this year, and motivation is a key factor in success. So, at first we’d agreed that the loser would get the winner a game, but Ei-Nyung and N thought that that was too lame a deal, so we agreed the loser would buy the winner a Wii. By the time one of us succeeds, they should be available, at least.

So, at Dim Sum, I tried not to eat ’till I was stupid, which is what I usually do, and ended up eating a much more controlled, happy amount of food. It was tasty, and I didn’t feel like I was going to explode after it was all over. After we got home, I started reading “The Hacker’s Diet,” at the recommendation of a friend of mine who’s been using it the last few months. The weird thing about it was that it wasn’t particularly surprising. I suppose that’s the thing that’s good about it. It’s not about some miracle no one’s ever heard of, or some quick, painless thing you can do to change everything magically. The main point is simple:

Eat fewer calories than you burn.

The things that I did find interesting were that a.) the writer tells you it’ll suck for a while, and b.) he explains that exercise, in terms of losing weight, isn’t the key. The key is to eat less.

The thing that was interesting for me was that I realized today that I have a really strong connection between exercise and fitness, because in high school, I was ripped, ate a ton, and exercised *all the time*. That association’s stuck, like some sort of muscle memory. So, I figure exercise + eat a ton = ripped, and that’s simply not the case, particularly because I’m no longer swimming for 3-4 hours a day, or riding my bike everywhere I go. And even if it was, at the rate I’m consuming calories, it wouldn’t make as much of a difference as eating a bit less would anyway.

That’s not to say I’m not exercising. At dim sum, S, called, and wanted to know if I wanted to go swimming. I had planned on hitting the Y later, but this was much, much better. It was a stunningly beautiful day – just about as perfect a day as one could get – and so I jumped at the chance to swim in an outdoor pool instead of the Y’s indoor one (S’s family still lives in Piedmont, and so he still has a membership at the pool). Ei-Nyung and Sean’s girlfriend H went running, while we went swimming, and all was well.

The rest of the afternoon was pretty laid back. Joe, Ei-Nyung and I watched a couple hours of the World’s Strongest Man competition, which was pretty hilarious, and awesome. Dinner consisted of some smoked salmon, cream cheese, crackers, and capers, along with some dumplings that Ei-Nyung cooked up. Quantities were much more reasonable than I’d normally consume, and though I feel hungry, it’s a good hungry, in the kind of way that lets you know that you actually haven’t overeaten.

After dinner, we walked to the Grand Lake, and caught a showing of “The Pursuit of Happyness”, whose titular misspelling really bothers me, but I suppose it’s part of the story, so there you go. I liked it – it’s a very “slice of life” sort of movie – I mean, there’s conflict and resolution and all that, but it doesn’t feel like that’s really the *point* of the movie. It’s just about this guy’s life, and what he goes through to try to make something of himself, and his relationship with his child. Touching, and sweet. Really well acted, too, both by Will Smith, and his kid, who plays his kid in the movie.

After that, took Mobius for a 1.2 mile walk – it’s pretty brisk out.

My starting weight at this morning’s weigh-in was 233.5 lbs, which puts my goal weight at 213.5, which would be the lowest my weight would be in about 3 years, and if I can “stick” it, and stabilize at that weight or less, that’d be the least I’d have weighed since meeting Ei-Nyung.

Wacky stuff. Good start to the year, though. It’s been a great day.

This year, I have only one resolution: get in shape.

What’s that actually mean? It means that I need to swim more, probably start lifting weights, eat better, cook more, eat less, start bringing more lunches from home, and find a place I can eat at that doesn’t have ridiculously huge portions.

Ideally, by the end of 2007, I’d like to be ~210-215, and in decent swimming shape. Right now, I’m at ~230, which is terrible, even for me in bad times. So, the plan’s going to involve *weekly* rewards for doing well, though I’m not sure what they are yet, monthly rewards if I meet my goals, in terms of getting to the gym, and getting an appropriate amount of physical activity, and a relatively big year reward at the end, if I manage to fulfill the goal. I don’t know what those are yet, but I’ll figure it out, post ’em here, and keep track of it all.

Right now, Ei-Nyung and I alternate walking the dog. One of us will walk him in the morning, the other walks at night, and the next day, it switches. So, one week, MWF in the morning, and the next T/Th. It works pretty well. We’ve been taking Mobius on longer and longer walks – I’m probably taking him on walks that are triple to quadruple what I was taking him on before. I think that continuing that, and trying to keep things vigorous will be pretty easy, because he’s our dog, and we have a responsibility to exercise him – the more the better.

On mornings where I don’t walk the dog, those days I hit the gym – so basically, two times one week, three times the next. That’s much more doable than the 4x/wk we were doing at one point.

I’m going to try to join the Master’s team at the Y, I think. The problem is that workouts are from 5:30-6:30, and I usually don’t get out of work ’till about 6:30. The plan will be to go in earlier in the morning to work, and try to get out of work earlier, as well. I get more done in the morning anyway, when no one’s around to disturb me, so this shouldn’t be too big a deal.

We’ll see. Regardless, the 2x/3x a week plan is enough, in my experience, to produce positive results in a reasonable timeframe, so I know that sticking to the plan will work. It’s just a matter of sticking to the plan.

I know, I know – every year, millions of people resolve to get more fit. 99% of those people fail. This year, it’s my only resolution. I need to do this, for my knee, my general health, and the overall quality of my life. Those are good reasons.

So, last year, I made a number of resolutions. Some of them worked out, some didn’t. Here’s how it went:

Health:
1.) Any meals purchased from the cafe downstairs at work will be split in two, half of which will be saved for the next day.
* While I worked at EA, I was pretty successful at this. That only lasted ’till mid-April, but I’d still call it a success.
2.) Exercise at home at least twice a week, if successful, monthly rewards will be applied.
* This didn’t really turn out, though throughout the early and middle parts of the year, I succeeded at getting to the Y more than twice a week. This completely fell apart once Ei-Nyung and I started working at different places, because we no longer had to abide by a routine that had us both getting up at the same time. I hope to resume this in the new year, but need to figure out some sort of motivation to get me out of bed in the morning early enough to get to the pool.
3.) Lose 10 lbs. by wedding, so as not to look like a fatass in pictures. Develop an stick to a schedule to do so. (see step 2, above)
* Not quite. By about a month after the wedding, I’d definitely converted about 10 lbs. of fat into muscle, but I wouldn’t call it a success, in large part because by the end of the year, it’d all converted back. Alas.
4.) Strengthen knee, prior to the honeymoon, that walking around London or Paris is not problematic (min. 5K on a treadmill in one go)
* This I was actually completely successful at. I could run a 5K on a treadmill by the time we went to Paris, and I successfully walked around way more than I would have been able to handle at the beginning of the year. Again, fitness-wise, that’s fallen off towards the end of the year, but for this goal, it was a success.

Games:
1.) Play “good” games to completion
* Hm. I’ve finished more games this year than in years past, and bought fewer games this year than last. I’ve still got a huge-ass stack of games that aren’t finished, but progress is in the right direction, still. I don’t think I’m ever going to finish the majority of my games – I’m just not interested in doing so for most games – they just have too much padding/filler. Games like Gears of War, that are really tight from start to finish… those things, I’ll almost always finish.
2.) Borrow more games from the IRC, instead of purchasing games, unless an understanding of the game requires extensive play, or immediate availability.
* Complete and total failure. 😀
3.) When I know that I am not likely to finish a game, anymore, put it away, so it does not clutter public space. Consider selling, or trading it.
* Improvement, but not success. I’ve traded a fistful of games (via cheapassgamer or TGF) that I knew I wasn’t going to play, at times when I could get decent deals for them. I also put away most of my PS2/Xbox games into a bookshelf, so they weren’t cluttering too much public space.
4.) Only ONE new console purchase this year, unless required by work.
* Sort of success, sort of not. On one hand, I bought only a DS Lite, and Ei-Nyung & her family bought me a 360. But I’d say it’s still sort of a failure. On the plus side, no Wii or PS3 for me this year.

Computer:
1.) Don’t spend so much time at home on the computer.
* A wash.
Mornings:
1.) Do not use the computer before leaving for work, for more than 10 minutes.
* A success while we were going to the gym. A failure afterwards.
TV:
1.) No more than an hour of TV per day – real time, not TiVo time. (excluding games and movies)
* A failure in every way. Battlestar Galactica was too good to pass up, as was House. I probably watched less “idle” TV – when there wasn’t something I was explicitly interested in watching, I’d get up and do other stuff, but still, that’s really grasping at straws.

Movies:
1.) Watch 1 movie per month that we already own, but haven’t yet seen.
* Probably 8/12 months were a success. We’ve still got a big backlog of movies we haven’t seen, though.
2.) Only purchase movies I know I will watch more than five times in three years.
* Movie purchases slowed way down this year, which was good. I’d pick up a couple movies at sales from the local Blockbuster, where I’d get 4/$20, and I’d only get movies I thought I’d watch a couple times, at least. So, in terms of money spent, it was a big improvement.

Rowing Machine:
1.) Fix Clutch
* Nope
2.) Use
* Nope. We moved the rowing machine into the garage to free up space in one of the rooms, once we got the Y membership. I think it’s a fine trade-off, though. One of these days, when we have space to spare (and we do), I’ll bring it back up and use it.

Stuff:
2.) Recycle magazines that are more than two months old.
* Largely done. EGM is the only one I keep hanging around for more than a month, as “bathroom reading,” but everything else has been chucked.
3.) Host a garage sale in June, after purging unwanted items from the garage
* Didn’t happen. Never got off our asses enough. We piled up a bunch of stuff to sell, if we ever had a garage sale, but never actually had the sale. I did manage to sell some stuff via Craigslist, or through work, that we simply weren’t using anymore. Got rid of a BMX bike, an old brown couch, and a fistful of other big things that took up a lot of space.
4.) Donate *all* unused or old computer equipment by the time we have the garage sale.
* Didn’t happen, so it didn’t happen. This should happen this year, though, as we’re trying to get rid of our desktop computers altogether.
5.) Move books from my parents’ house to my house, and organize in bookshelves by end of January.
* Yes, and no. Yes moved books from my parents’ house, ’cause they sold the house and I had to get all my stuff out of there, but bookshelves *organized*? I wouldn’t say that.
6.) Sell or donate board games we no longer play (by end of February)
* Didn’t happen
7.) Purge kitchen (again) by end of February
* Didn’t happen to an appreciable extent.

Clothing:
1.) Box up “nostalgic” shirts that I no longer wear regularly (TEP, water polo, etc.) to keep as souvenirs, so they do not take up closet space (by Jan. 3).
* Done
2.) Purge closet of worn or unused clothing on a monthly basis
* Done, to a limited extent. Culling of T-shirts I didn’t wear has been an ongoing process, where I’ll only re-stock the closet from the right, so periodically, I’ll go through the shirts on the left, and pull some out I’m pretty sure I’ll never wear.
3.) When clothing develops holes, or excessive wear, stop wearing that article of clothing. Donate, throw out, or patch, as necessary.
* Done.
4.) Purchase no new t-shirts this year (you have enough already)
* I bought two shirts. One was an Oaklandish t-shirt, the other was an “Obey Gravity: It’s the Law!” shirt I couldn’t pass up. Maybe the Gravity one was last year, I don’t remember. But the Oaklandish one was recent.

House:
1.) Lawn – demolish front lawn & cover with ground cover (mulch, moss, whatever) by end of February!
* Quite surprisingly, done. The front lawn, with the prodding and help (okay, driving force) of my mom, we completely tore up the front lawn, put in stone retaining walls, and repopulated the lawn. It’s been hard to keep it up, and it needs trimming and weeding, when it’s dry enough to do so, but it’s still in pretty good shape, despite the fact that the weather has confused all the plants.
2.) Put up interior trim in finished rooms
* Sort of done. Not in our bedroom, but I did put up trim in the downstairs. Still have to stain it, but… yeah.
3.) Put up vent cover on exposed vents in downstairs living room
* Nope. Gonna get Colin to cut us a nice CNC’ed piece of wood to cover up one of the vent holes, but haven’t gotten around to it yet.
4.) Get upstairs drywall done (after roof leaks are fixed)
* Roof leak not fixed, so not done. This is on the schedule for April of this year.
5.) Get roofer to fix roof leaks in front of house
* I came as close as I could to success on this without succeeding. I had an appointment with the roofer to finally come out and do the warranty repair, when he gave the only excuse I’d buy without question – his dog was gravely ill, and so he was stuck at the vet. I feel like a sucker now, though, because it’s been weeks and weeks, and he hasn’t done so much as call me back. *sigh*
6.) Do laundry at least twice a week
* Nope. Probably better than we were last year, but still terrible at this.
7.) Put up “point system” chore board by Jan. 10th
* Yeah – so, I did this, and it worked really well. And then at some point, we collectively fell of the wagon, and that was that.

Creative:
1.) Work at developing one skill, equivalent to the effort required for NaNoWriMo (music, writing, painting, cooking, drawing, etc.)
* Done, for cooking. I think this year, Ei-Nyung and I went from competant at-home cooks to pretty good ones. We’re still not to the point where we’re creating recipes from nothing, for the most part, but if you put down *any* recipe in front of us, I’m confident we can pull it off.
2.) Do at least one editing pass on last year’s NaNo project, format for book form, and get it printed (two copies for archiving, one for use)
* Failed

Cooking:
1.) Cook at home every weekend day, with three meals as exceptions per month.
* Nope. Better than last year, but not by much. We did cook more at home this year, but still ate out a lot.
2.) Create a “cookbook” at home, listing recipes that we know work, organized by how long it takes to cook them. Create a means to generate quick recipe lists, based on what we already have in the house on a regular basis.
* Nope
2a.) Try using the Jornada, which we never use, for task 2, by end of January
* Nope
3.) Create recipes that “work together” to use ingredients. i.e.: If chicken comes in packages of 8 thighs, and a recipe uses 5, have a recipe ready that uses 3.
* Nope
4.) Once a month, buy an ingredient I’ve never bought before, and cook with it.
* Nope

Relationships:
1.) See my mother at least once a month for non-dog related reasons.
* This was a success, until they moved. After that, not so much.
2.) Call my father once a month, for non-work, or mother related reasons.
* Failed. Alas.
3.) Call my cousin once a month.
* Failed. I did call him once or twice this year, which is basically an infinite improvement over years previous. So, hopefully I can keep that up, at least.
4.) See Aneel and Dave once every three months each.
* Failed.
5.) Create a “scheduled social event” that occurs once every three weeks, in the city, at the same location, and time every time it occurs.
* We had this going for a little while, and it was actually pretty cool. The problem was actually that it happened *too* often, and once you’ve missed two or three events, it just falls off your calendar. But when we’re regularly have a couple people show up at Crossroads to chill, it was actually a lot of fun.

Work:
1.) Understand what is necessary to achieve a “Lead Designer” position, and develop a plan to get to that position within the next two years.
* Done.
2.) Continue to progress at the same ridiculous, and sort of absurd rate I have been over the last two years.
* Hm. This is sort of an interesting question, because I changed jobs in the middle of the year. I’ll get to that later, though.
3.) Don’t get complacent, or negative.
* Failed. I got extremely negative toward March of ’06, but it wasn’t unjustified. The management of the team changed, and competant, friendly, caring people were replaced with utterly inept buffoons. The team dynamics completely fell apart, and though I did my best to affect positive change, you can only get your ass handed to you for being the messenger so many times before the only reasonable response is, “Fuck this shit.” So, I quit on my terms, and I don’t regret it. There are other things I regret about work this year, namely that I did manage to crank out the worst game I’ve ever worked on this year, but there was absolutely nothing I could do about that.
4.) Determine whether I’m going to stay at Maxis, or look for another opportunity elsewhere, and then follow through with that decision wholeheartedly (by two weeks after performance review)
* Done.
5.) Understand that I am a game designer, and stop second-guessing myself.
* Done. I had a moment of euphoria a few months ago where it really hit me that not only am I comfortable as a game designer, I’m *awesome* at my job.

Mobius:
1.) Take Mobius out every weekend for an “event,” such as a trip to the beach, or the dog walk, Point Isabelle, Anza, or Temescal.
* Pretty much done. We’d get him out and about when we had free time, and we’ve really upped the length, and quality of his walks. Sadly, my mom, who used to spend a lot of time with him, is now too far away to do so, but he plays with the neighbors’ dog, which makes him pretty happy.

Wedding:
1.) Find an officiant by Jan. 20th.
* Not done on time, but done.
2.) Schedule a tasting by Jan. 20th.
* I think this was actually done on time.

Other:
1.) Use the photo printer to print out, and album-ize photos from the last four years, to prevent loss if hard drive explodes.
* Oops.
2.) Put this list of resolutions into Outlook, with alerts that provide enough time to complete the tasks (by Jan. 3)
* Done, but not necessarily followed. 😀

All in all, I think I did okay. There are a lot of failures on the list, but the big things, I think, went pretty well this year. The only thing I’m disappointed by is that I was succeeding pretty admirably getting back into shape in the middle of the year, and then completely failed in the last four months of the year. But, I know that it’s possible, and I know what I need to do to actually get back in shape, and I know I can achieve reasonably good results on a reasonably short time frame. What I think I need to do is link positive rewards wtih positive performance, which is something that worked astonishingly well for NaNoWriMo in ’05, but I haven’t done since.

That’s a different post, though.

I just finished this book, after Ei-Nyung, Colin and Andre all had good things to say about it, and I’m floored. Not only was it the best published book I’d read in a while (it might inch up toward the top three, for me), conceptually, it’s so brilliant it’s like a magic trick – I can’t even begin to understand how someone writes a story like that.

Sure, during the writing and editing process, you’re free to chop, and edit, and rearrange – but this all felt so natural, so linear, despite its chronological disjointedness that it felt like it just flowed, from start to finish. I loved the characters, I loved the story, and at the end… well, I won’t spoil it.

It’s a great book.

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything. That’s mostly ’cause there hasn’t been much to write about. Work, eat, sleep, walk dog, play with dog, eat, blah blah blah.

One thing that’s changed is that ever since my mom & dad moved to the East Coast, my mom hasn’t been around to keep Mobius company during the day. In the time that she’s been gone, Mobi’s been getting restless, and somewhat irritable. This weekend, we (or at least I) finally realized that it’s just that he hasn’t gotten enough exercise recently, because he’s only being walked for about 20 minutes each, twice a day.

So, we’ve stepped it up a bit. I took him for about a 20 minute walk this morning ’cause I got up late, but Ei-Nyung was home today sick, so it wasn’t that bad, since he had company. In the evening, I walked with the dogzor to Safeway and back, which took about an hour total. Yesterday, I walked him quite a bit, and the day before as well. Taken him over to play with the neighbor’s dog a few times, and he’s definitely a.) more tired, and b.) happier.

So that’s a nice change. I’m gonna start coming home for lunch a couple times a week to say “hi” to the dog, and play with him a bit, to boot.

Picked up Rainbow Six: Vegas tonight, in part for research, and in part because a bunch of friends on Live have the game. Ubisoft has really been on a tear recently. I threw in GRAW the other day, and was reminded how good the game looks. For a first-gen game on a new piece of hardware, it still holds up remarkably well.

Yet again, I’ve come to the point where I’ve finished editing text for the game I’m currently working on. I think this is the third time, now, I’ve been “done” with that task, but it keeps coming back to haunt me. Still, this should knock down the whole thing. All the text has been edited, and now, we’re finally getting to playthroughs, tuning, and the like. So, that’s a plus.

If this is really the end of my text-rewriting tasks, that’ll be a huge relief. No more correcting fourth-grade equivalent grammar, no more correcting random spelling errors, blah blah blah. Such a relief.

Anyway. Yeah, nothing really to report, otherwise, ’cause not a lot is going on.

seppo