Monthly Archives: February 2006

Phat Lewt

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Ayyam-i-ha ends tonight; we celebrated last night with the ‘rents. We’re pretty chill about it all… a gift or two each, watch a movie, have some dinner. It’s good. So, in addition to the random nifty homemade stuff (my mother makes a killer zucchini relish), I got World of Warcraft from my brother (he picked up a copy too, we’re playing on Kael’Thas if anyone wants to join in), and a 60gb video iPod from my parents. This is a MORE than adequate replacement for my old 1st gen 5gb iPod that got stolen during the holidays. I’m quite happy with it, and look forward to playing with it once my packet is in later tonight.

And while we’re on the topic of gifts, my sweetheart girlfriend Erica got me an early birthday present… a Dr. Who scarf! (Anyone who watched Dr. Who during the Tom Baker years will know EXACTLY what I’m talking about…) I’m definitely looking forward to getting ahold of that (didn’t go down this weekend, as I was attending a memorial service for one of my former professors, so she told me about it via IM).

This is a bit of a nothing post, but I’m kind of alright with that.

MacBook Pro

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As those who have been reading a while know, I ordered my new MacBook Pro about five minutes after they were announced, meaning I was one of the first few thousand orders. My order receipt said it would be shipped the 15th, the day they came out… and then Apple delayed all the orders while they upgraded the CPUs to the new 2.0GHz Intel Core Duo chips instead of the originally spec’d 1.83Ghz chips. The new ship date was listed as the 28th.

Then, it shipped on February 20th, with a scheduled arrival date the same as my original estimated arrival date (the 23rd). To make things even better, it ended up arriving a day early, on the 22nd! (Sometimes, it’s the little things that make us go “Woot!”)

It’s now the 24th, and I’ve had essentially two days to play with the machine, transfer files over (I don’t use the migration assistant… I like the opportunity of a new machine to re-organize my data and clear out clutter), and install my essential applications (namely: BBEdit, iWork, Photoshop CS2, and the Developer Tools).
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General Update 93.2.2b1

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I’m down in Rhode Island again (this is a trend observant readers may have noticed). I’ve been spending time with Erica, and in general making rumblings about getting work done rather than actually doing it. I’m feeling alright about that, though, as it’s helping me collect my thoughts for my critique of Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, viewing it as a social commentary.

Today has been a mixed bag. On the positive side, my laptop has shipped a week earlier than expected (it had been delayed due them upgrading all the systems from 1.83GHz dual core to 2.0GHz dual core), which makes me quite happy. I’ve also been upgrading various bits and bobs of software (including WordPress and Gallery), and in general doing little computery housekeeping that I’ve been slacking on.

On the negative side, I just received an email from the school’s dean, informing the student body that one of our professors just passed away from cancer. I worked with Charlotte for fully two semesters, and greatly appreciated both her humor and her insight. I strongly suspect I’ll be blowing off my other weekend plans and attending the service this Saturday; she really was a gem, and I feel like I should pay my respects.

On to other things. My friend Eli proposed to his girlfriend Pia last week, and she said yes, so congratulations to them. Also, I’m thinking of moving to Rhode Island for an interim period of about 2 years, while I get Critical Games rolling as a development company (yep, Uri and I have decided to bite the bullet and do it… I hope to speak with people at GDC both for seed funding and developers, but also for general insights into trying to put together a small, tight development team in this day and age). Why Rhode Island? It’s as good a spot as any for now, and it’s also where Erica is, so that way I’m at the very least not dividing my time quite so frenetically as I am now. It’s hardly set in stone, but basically I’m looking to buy a townhouse or condo in the area to live in until Erica finishes school, and then both of us want to go west.

Of course, time tables change, and so do locations, so it’s all still very tentative. I may end up back in the Upper Valley instead (which is at least closer to RI than Montpelier is, but that’s not saying much), or in southern New Hampshire feeding Boston. A lot will depend on what happens at GDC, in terms of accelerating or deccelerating our plans. I am fully aware that I may need to go take a job elsewhere for a while and leave this as a side project that I do in my spare time until we can afford to break free and do it full time. Again, depends on what happens at GDC.

UberCon VII

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I’m at UberCon VII (yes, 7, they add up fast when you’re doing two a year), sitting in my hotel room using the wireless access. I’ve been running around all day and decided it was time for some down/quiet. (I may go down in a little bit again to see what’s going on… we’ll see.)

Barring some computer difficulties (out of 24ish rented computers, only 8 had received the correct image, which means the renting company has had to come out and correct things… BUT, that means the attendees can’t use fully two thirds of the LAN until it’s fixed), things have been pretty chill. Some friends were in a car accident on the way down from Canada, but appear to be by and large alright, and have made it down finally.

Erica gets here tomorrow morning, and I’m really looking forward to that. While it’s only been two weeks, it’s felt significantly longer since I last saw her, and I don’t know why. Regardless of that, it’ll be great to see her. I had a pleasant chat with her father, who didn’t seem all that put out that I’m seeing his daughter. I’m hoping the same will be said come Sunday, when Erica’s mother will be attending the convention as well.

I saw more Pepsi than I ever have in my life today… while I’m not officially doing anything for the convention anymore, I still tend to help out at the conventions (it’s just sort of what I do… I end up having more fun that way than trying to sit and play games), and spent a good portion of the late morning/early afternoon driving down to the Pepsi distribution center in Piscataway and back, to collect their donation to the convention (cases upon cases of pepsi, diet pepsi, mountain dew, and their new energy drink, MDX). There was easily 10 to 15 million dollars worth of pepsi product in that warehouse. Pretty impressive, especially when you consider that just covers one region’s distribution… there are warehouses like that all over the country.

On a random non-con related note: my laptop should ship this week (the 15th is what the site is listing)! Wooooo!