Ah, naturally, I spoke too soon. One of the three leaky windows is at it again. I should be less paranoid, because I think I understand exactly where and exactly why it’s leaking, and that it’s completely repairable, and that I know someone who can and will repair it – but it makes me paranoid, and is again keeping me from sleep, and it makes me constantly check the other two windows, which take a little longer to show leaks than the one that’s leaking now.

So it’s possible, even after all that, that the windows will still leak, and that nothing is in fact, fixed at all. It looks – looks – like two are holding steady, but unfortunately, only time will tell. I still have high hopes for the two that are holding, and I think that the one that is leaking (the bedroom window) is doing so from the mini-roof above the garage – but it still makes me worry, and the worry keeps me from sleep.

Alas.

Happy Birthday to my late grandfather!

Work:

Work’s going remarkably well, I think. I’ve been working on implementing an object that’s a critical part of one of the systems I’ve been designing, and it’s actually coming along much faster than I thought it would. It’s not super complex, mind you, and the logic behind the *system* is actually completely missing, but we’ll be able to get an idea of how it *feels* in the world, which is sort of strange, even without the underlying logic. So that’s actually pretty cool.

I’ve definitely been getting more responsibility at work, which is a pleasant… I wouldn’t call it a surprise – I’ve been trying explicitly to get this to happen, so I’m not … surprised – I suppose it’s all proceeding as I have forseen at a much quicker rate than I’d expected. I expected to have to pick the lock, but it looks like in the process, I’ve actually busted the door down, and appear to be able to walk in, straight away. I expect that there’s work/disappointments/arduous labor to be had in the process, but so far, it’s been really invigorating.

Actually, at this particular moment, I wouldn’t change a thing.

I’ve got enough responsibility, that I can lay out the course for what I’m doing, and actually see it almost all the way through to the end. Something I probably couldn’t do in a more design-oriented role, and something I definitely couldn’t do in a more OE-oriented role. For me, this is exactly where I want to be right this minute.

House:

The windows look like they’re actually ok. I say that hesitantly, because it was raining pretty hard tonight, and still no leaks that I can see. That’s not to say it won’t happen, but it looks pretty damn good, all things considered, and I’m actually optimistic that this fix might stick. Of course, the tradeoff is that we have rats, and even though we’ve taken measures to isolate them from food, and the upstairs peeps have sealed off some of the more obvious access points, it looks like we’re going to have to put our faith in the hands of professionals. Which kind of sucks, because it’s probably a minimum of $350, and more likely a year-long contract at ~$5-600ish, until we can proof the exterior of the house. Maybe simple, maybe not. Hard to say, I suppose. Quote’s coming in next week. We shall see.

Work Part 2:

Got a raise today – or rather, it was made official today, which is nice. Not huge – hell, not much more than inflation – 3.4%. But still, it’s the first raise I’ve had in five years, and it was apparently somewhat above average for our group. And there’s still the bonus in May, once the fiscal year closes out, which is nice. Any little bit helps. But I think more than anything, the notion that I’m not actually *losing* money, year-to-year, is a nice change of pace, and I feel like my career is *progressing*, which is a nice change of pace, and I feel like my job is reasonably *stable*, which is yet another nice change of pace, and I really enjoy what I’m doing, and think I’m really kicking ass at it, which is a final, extra nice change of pace from years previous.

Other’n that, things are just pretty good all around. We taught Mobius to stand on his hind legs, which happened *really* fast. He’s a really bright dog when we give him stuff to do – I think we need to focus more on keeping him mentally stimulated, to be honest. Gotta read up on other things to do with him. He loves hide and seek, and doing tricks. Funny little guy. Really makes me happy that we got him.

Things are also going great with friends, with the fiancee, pretty much everything. I’m happy as a clam. Hell, even finances have been on the uptick, and though there was a hiccup with a late W-2 that’s gonna cost me ~$650, I think it’ll still end up ok.

Games:

Picked up Sly 2: Band of Thieves, Urbz for the DS, and ATV Offroad Fury 2. So far, all three games are *excellent*, and for a total of $30, I think it was a steal. Been playing some Fable, FIFA Street, NBA Street v.3, Oddworld: Stranger’s Wrath, and some Halo 2 online. I’d rate every one of those games above an 8, for varying reasons – but all told, I think that whole batch of games cost me… $115, for 8 games. Not too bad. Mind you, that includes using my yearly points from EA’s store, but what the hell – a free game’s a free game. 😉

Hm. Almost seems like I should be starting to get paranoid. Things can’t stay this good forever.

Weird. Been having problems logging in to Blogger via my bookmark to the editing page, but went to the homepage, and logged on just fine. Strange.

Anyhow – home today with some sort of stomach nastiness. Feeling better – I figure I just must have eaten something off last night. Watched Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow this morning, and was pretty thoroughly underwhelmed. I wanted to like it, but just found it very hard to get into – Gwyneth Paltrow’s character is so monumentally idiotic that it’s extremely hard to root for her, particularly when Angelina Jolie and Jude Law have some actual chemistry going. Ah, well. Viva Netflix!

Still feeling pretty lousy, but hopefully it’ll get better soon. Ick.

Made a jambalaya-esque risotto last night, with these giant freakin’ shrimp. Ei-Nyung grilled some asparagus and steamed some squash to go along, and we fed six people with it. Tasty, and fun. It was odd – for some reason, I really wanted to plate all the food nicely, and so I used a can as a ring mold for the risotto, put the grilled shrimp on top, laid the asparagus up against it, and drizzled the whole thing with chili oil.

The risotto was a little too tomato-y – I’d definitely drain the tomatoes first the next time I were to make something similar, but overall, it wasn’t bad.

Also made some quick lasagna Saturday morning, which will be lunch or dinner for the rest of the week. Tonight, Ei-Nyung’s making the butterflied chicken from America’s Test Kitchen, which should be excellent.

So police apparently stopped a “suicide pact” that was supposed to have taken place on Valentine’s Day, and involved something like 30 people. Am I being callous in saying that that seems odd to me, and that there might be a better use of the police’s time? If someone wants to kill themselves, who cares? Shouldn’t a person have the right to decide to end their own life? Even if you stop a “pact” like this, what’s to stop them from just killing themselves next week?

It strikes me that this “Jeff Gannon” issue isn’t getting a lot of play in the media. I wonder if part of it is that it takes a staggering sort of incompetance within the media for this to have gone on for so long, given how obviously this guy was propagandizing. But more than incompetance, if we start evaluating some sort of quantitative difference between propaganda and actual news, that raises pretty critical questions about organizations like Fox News, and whether they should even be considered “news,” at all.

So maybe their hope is if they ignore “Jeff Gannon,” who is, in case you haven’t been keeping up, a White House Press Corps member – a reporter for a GOPUSA-affiliated “news” organization called “Talon News,” who used a fake name (real name JD Guckert), and is potentially affiliated with a male prostitution organization, yet still had White House Press access, and was regularly called on by Scott McClellan at briefings, it’ll all go away. If it goes away, they don’t have to actually answer questions about what is news, and what isn’t.

But “Jeff Gannon,” particularly after Armstrong Williams and that other woman being discovered to be on the White House’s payroll without disclosure… well, there’s a pattern, here. The notion of a “free and independent” media, as Bush says, is critical to the proper functioning of a democracy. Though most Americans may be too cow-eyed to bother questioning why something like this is important, it’s *critically* important that we figure out why a guy like “Jeff Gannon,” gets the access that he does.

And that’s even ignoring the hypocrisy of this guy, who writes articles defending the FMA, yet appears to be gay. Oh, and how did he have access to info about Valerie Plame, exactly?

It’s not a small issue. Not by a long shot.

From CNN.com:

“U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said today that Iran must live up to its international obligations to halt its nuclear program or the next steps are in the offing. “And I think everybody understands what the ‘next steps’ mean,” Rice told reporters after a meeting with NATO foreign ministers and European Union officials. In his state of the union address, President Bush singled out Iran as “the world’s primary state sponsor of terror — pursuing nuclear weapons.””

Now I’m not saying, if there’s a legitimate threat in the world, that one shouldn’t confront that threat. But did these assholes learn ANYTHING from Iraq? Diplomacy schmiplomacy, it would seem. “Hey Iran! Fuck the Europeans who are trying to negotiate with you, and achieve some sort of settlement without war – if you don’t stop right now, we’ll fuck you up! and I think everybody understands what “fuck you up” means. Bitches! Hoo-ah!” Christ, you fucking morons, what the fuck is wrong with you assholes? Not a working brain cell in your head.

Huh. So today actually went pretty well. Of course, it’s unlikely to get truly impartial feedback from someone in test, but Rob, the guy that got sent over, did a great job of putting the prototypes through their paces, and giving me the kind of feedback I needed. Some problems popped up (some of which have already been fixed), and he gave me some more subjective feedback that I’ll be trying to incorporate over the next week or so. Documentation’s supposed to be done by the end of next week, and I think I’ll be good to go. Got a fistful of stuff to write up, but I think it’s well on its way.

I’m psyched, actually, because the more subjective feedback was good, and watching him play, it was clear to me that the potential I see in this system isn’t just in my head. It’s not Aura fun, but in part, because it’s not anywhere near complete. It’d be like if I made Aura in a text file with no sound, and then asked someone to play it, and see if they liked it or not. Not quite, I suppose, but it’s close to that – while the guts are there, a lot of the bells and whistles that’ll make the experience complete are simply missing, just because of the state the game’s currently in.

So, I’ve got proper feedback from a working prototype, a week and a half before the deadline, on a system that’s probably close to the most complete new system in the game, period, and something that I got working at the end of last week that could be really pretty cool when it’s done. Verification that the “fun” isn’t just in my head, by someone who’s actually had to spend more than four hours just playing with a woefully incomplete prototype.

How this all fits into the “big picture” is still a little amorphous, but it’s getting nailed down pretty quick. I’ve gotta say, I’m enjoying the process.

Fun fun. I’ve been working on some more design-oriented stuff for work. Tomorrow’s sort of the first “test” of it all – literally, as I’ve got a tester at my disposal to hammer on the prototypes I’ve made. It’s a bit daunting, actually – tomorrow I get my first independant feedback, I actually “manage” a person for a day, and now, it’s not just my time I’m wasting if I screw up.

So, it’s sort of strange – I was asking for some design-related responsibility, and I’ve got it – which is *awesome*. It’s also pretty intimidating, as the feature I’m responsible for appears to have become one of the relatively major selling points of the game, at least internally. It’s really one of those situations where if I kick ass, I think it’s a real opportunity to get more responsibility, at the same time, the converse is true, where if I really screw this up, it is almost entirely all on my head.

The strange thing, of course, is that I have almost no real “experience” in this regard. Sure, Aura was a great project in the sense that we all gave design related input, and getting sort of “nuts & bolts” experience on something *else* was really helpful. And last year’s game was a real learning experience, as my position really required understanding almost every aspect of its production. But, fundamentally, we’re dealing with a pretty huge project- even bigger than the quarter million dollar reactor I made at my last job pretty much by my lonesome. With this, at this point, I’m still just wasting just my time if I screw up (and one more person, potentially, tomorrow). But once we get into production, there’s gonna be a pretty large number of people that this design impacts, and any mistakes that get missed now increased tenfold to fix at every step.

whoo.

So, yeah – no progress without risk, I suppose. But what’s the alternative? The status quo? No thanks. I think, so far, that things have turned out pretty well. Tomorrow, I’ll get feedback, and for good or ill, the result will be progress.

 

The chicken, as a followup to the last post, was phenomenal. And the risotto turned out pretty good, too. The chocolate strawberries, even better than before, ’cause we ended up with a much darker chocolate this time. Whee fun. I really like cooking, and moreover, I really like eating great food. 😀