Potpourri

It's still March?

We got Visual Studio 2010 at work. The good: it's blue. The bad: it's so slow it makes me want to bash my head into my keyboard. I finally put in a request for SlickEdit.

I think it's kinda lame to sign your emails "Cheers" unless you actually say "Cheers" in real life. I also think these Twitter hashtags that are being forced down our throats are pretty lame too. Stuff like #shamrockshake. So, obviously, I'm going to start signing my emails "#cheers".

Did you know that I made some music? I think I might be the only person who listens to it, but I'm really a fan. Seriously, I listen to my own stuff all the time. Is that weird? #isthatweird

Levi knows how to google search for exactly one thing: "bob". This finds Bob the Builder, then he plays games. Leah told me today that he had a little typo... thankfully she jumped up and helped him before he searched for "boob".

Mona the Monte Carlo's Mirror

It took me a few seconds after I sat down to realize my rear-view mirror had fallen off. It was hanging from the ceiling by a wire. I was a bit confused. What happened? Was my window broken? No... I think it just... fell off. I had been suspecting this for a while, but at that moment it became clear: my car is an official P.O.S.

What to do? I picked it up, put it up where it was supposed to go, put it back down. I guess I just go home. I looked at the spot where my mirror was supposed to be, then craned by neck around backwards and backed out of my parking spot.

Driving home was interesting. Not only am I missing a review mirror but I have this thing flapping around my car like a plastic vampire bat on a string. Every time I turn I have to grab hold of it or risk being knocked in the head. To make matters worse, I think I have the least tinted windows you can possible have, and I didn't need a mirror to feel the guy in the BMW behind me laughing.

Don't worry. This is nothing a little Loctite Rearview Mirror Adhesive can't fix. Or duct tape.

A Play in 1K

Charlie: Did you hear we're going to be characters in a play?
Dan: You're breaking the fourth wall.
Charlie: The what?
Dan: Nevermind.
Charlie: A one kilobyte play no less! Who's ever heard of a 1k play? That's just ridiculous.
Dan: You've really never heard of the fourth wall?
Charlie: [blank stare]
Dan: Ok. Forget it.
Dan: Yeah, it's ridiculous.
Charlie: I mean what the hell can we do in 1k?
Dan: Not much.
...
Charlie: You know Anne is going to be a playwright.
Dan: You think so?
Charlie: You never know.
...
Charlie: Plays are supposed to be seen on stage. Not read off a screen. So I don't see why 1k means anything.
Dan: I guess the author can intend whatever he wants.
Charlie: Blah. He's a chump.
Charlie: Plays were around back before people could read.
Dan: Whaat?
Charlie: I'm serious.
Dan: How can you possibly know that?
Charlie: It's a fact!
Dan: Ok.
...
Charlie: Leah's gonna hate this post.

Baby Magician

Every night I swaddle Noelle in this Velcro straight jacket thing (it's for her own good). She thinks she's Harry Houdini. She starts moving her arms around under there and sometimes she busts out, or at least gets one hand poking out the top.

Lately she's been cheating. She pulls her hand up real quick before I get it on all the way. I tell her to wait until I say go, but she doesn't listen so I have to hold her hands down.

Last night she tried a new tactic I couldn't quite figure out. Somehow she was twisting her body, or maybe pulling her knees up, so I couldn't get the swaddle wrapped up all the way. I'm sure she was trying to get me to slack off on the swaddling so she'd have an easy time escaping.

Who knows what she'll come up with next.

Naps

Real quick post. Gotta be straight with you, I love sitting around the house. It's Sunday, we skipped church, Levi's taking a nap (actually asleep), Noelle's taking a nap, Leah's taking a nap. I'm working on my webpage (the other one).

Also, Friday night we went to Five Guys then the park. It was lots of fun, but what you really need to know is Noelle loves smooth Jazz.

A lesson about Dolphins

Levi: [says something about riding dolphins]
Dad: Hey, Levi. I'm going to teach you something about dolphins. Dolphins and whales are different than fish and sharks. Dolphins and whales breathe through blowholes and fish and sharks breathe through gills.
Levi: ...
Dad: Does that make any sense?
Levi: No.
Dad: Ok. Well, dolphins and whales are mammals.
Levi: Yeah. And you can ride some of them.

Back to Work

Today was my first day back to work after a month off.

I was a little anxious last night like it was the first day of school or something. I thought I might forget how to work. I knew I'd feel better about the whole returning to work thing after a day back, and I do for the most part.

Everything is just how I remember it: crazy. I have a todo list that I'll never get to the bottom of. It's a priority stack. Important stuff gets added towards the top and not as important stuff gets added towards the bottom (where it will stay forever). When I pull an item off the stack to work on it usually gets its own sub-stack. If I don't keep up with this ridiculous bookkeeping I run the risk of forgetting what I was doing or missing something important. If I keep my todo lists organized and prioritized then it reduces my stress level. Got a million things to do? Just prioritize your list and start at the top.

My work is stressful sometimes, but in my experience, there is a scale with stressful on one side and boring on the other. For work, I'd almost always take stressful over boring, though when I'm stressed I can only hope for something nice and boring.

They replaced the arcade with a cafe. Instead of arcade games and pool and such I can buy sandwiches that were shipped there in plastic bags. I'm not complaining. I rarely used the arcade and often get hungry at work.

I had so many emails that I didn't even try to read them. First my Outlook crashed. On the second attempt I was able to click "Mark All as Read". Bam. Caught up on email. I'm sure that'll come back to bite me.

We're starting up crunch time. Not a few days or weeks of crunch time, but a few months. Thankfully, I get to ease back into it, and I should have a few weeks of normal hours. After that, there is a good chance I'll be able to put in some extra hours from home. I'm getting set up for remote access which I've never had before. I'm not looking forward to working hard all day then coming home and forcing myself to log in from home and work more, but it'll be worth it if I can see Levi before he goes to bed. I'm not worried about Noelle. She's bright eyed and bushy tailed between the hours of midnight and two AM.

Leah and the kids did good today, but today was a school day for Levi so the real test is tomorrow. It was great to come home and see them. I picked up Levi and carried him around on my shoulders and asked about his day. Then I picked up Noelle and thought about how this was the first time that I ever held her after missing her all day at work. Then she spew'd me. Then poo'd me.

Ball Stuck in Tree

Levi likes to make up games. One of his favorites is "ball stuck in tree". It takes two people, one (usually me, but in this case Pepaw) has the job of getting the ball stuck in the tree. Then the other person (always Levi) stands on top of his slide and has to hit the tree with the bat until the ball falls out. This usually takes about five seconds. Then player number one has to pick up the ball again and stick it back in the tree.

The most exciting part of the game is when a loose ball gets stuck again in a branch further down the tree. When this happens everybody points and laughs and screams "DOUBLE STUCK!!!"

Cast of Characters

Here are the people you need to know. From now on if I say something like "Levi called Noelle a meatball", you'll have some context.

	Tom. Dad. Yours truly.
	Leah. My wonderful wife. Mother of two.
	Levi. My son. Asks a lot of questions.
	Noelle. My daughter. Drinks a lot of milk.

Organization of the Site

I'm afraid for you, dear reader, that this blog will be arranged in a stream of consciousness format. In other words, there will be no organization. Your only option is to go by date. Which should work fine. As long as you aren't looking for anything in particular. Maybe I'll change my mind, but I just don't see any kind of organization by topic to be useful. What would the topics be? Who knows! I mean I can't even claim that individual posts will have a coherent topic.

I like toast.

VVVVVV is for Victory

I beat the game VVVVVV, and let me ensure you, that is an accomplishment. As you can see I died 2085 times. I can't remember ever being that furious at my computer screen, but I couldn't give up.

This game is insanely hard, but the checkpoints are close together so it's not an "artificial" difficulty. Each checkpoint is just really, really hard.

It's fair to say I hated this game, but I loved this game. It reminded me why we play video games - because of the challenge. In fact, this game started me on a new campaign to play difficult video games like we used to play back on the NES. Now those were hard games. Nowadays you just pay to play through a story. Boring. Games can provide you with a experience no other medium can, but only when they're challenging. Pick up this game (you can find it on Steam) and remember why we play games.

First Post

First words of the first post. Hi, my name is Tom. This is going to be a blog about anything except Magic: the Gathering.

I have a Magic blog already, that's why.

I started my Magic blog on a whim just like I started this blog on a whim. But, I found I enjoyed blogging. The thing is, I've always kept a kind of a journal. Now I'm going to share it with people. Why? Not really sure. Something deep down I think. I love my Magic site and I hope I keep it going a long time, but this one will be low commitment. Low commitment, but free to talk about whatever I want, not just magical cards.

One reason I'm doing this is for myself. I want a record (even a random and scattered tiny fragmented one) of my life besides Magic. I don't want to think twenty years from now, "Well... I have every Magic: the Gathering deck I ever built documented, but I wrote nothing about when my daughter was born". So here, I get to talk about my family.

No last names, (I'm old school like that), but, as I said, my name is Tom. My wife's name is Leah. I have son Levi who is three and half and my Daughter Noelle was born three weeks ago. They are all very special to me. Much more on them later I'm sure.

So I imagine this blog will be for me, for my family (hi Mom), but also maybe for random strangers on the internet. Kind of like how a novel is for strangers. I hope this will be personal, but accessible to someone from the outside. Also, I reserve the right to quit this blog at a moment's notice. In fact, that's how my Magic blog started. In the first post I said I was worried about starting a blog then having everyone see me quit, but If you don't have any readers then what's it matter! I spend a good bit of effort promoting my Magic site, but I won't with this one. I wouldn't even know how to begin promoting a blog about anything except Magic: the Gathering. This blog is also an experiment to see what happens to a blog that is not promoted. Will Google find it? Maybe, but it's entirely possible that I will have zero views for a long time. I'm going to remind myself that that's ok and this is firstly a blog for me and my family. If any others come along for a ride then that's bonus.

Seems like a fine place to end my first post.