I started my new job today. I know it’s just the first day and all but… wow.
Also, I received my final paycheck from my previous employer and it contained 132.71 hours of unused vacation time. Excellent! I am kind of irritated that they took out money for things like medical insurance which of course is canceled before the final paycheck was mailed to me, but whatever.
Sanya Weathers (AKA “Tweety”) has a really touching post up for memorial day on her Eating Bees blog .
I know most “gamers” tend to be a little detached from reality, which is why I think her post is so poignant.
Go read it.
Be a little sad. That’s the point of the holiday. It’s ok.
It has been 5 days now since I entered in my full CD key and upgraded my account from the canceled pre-order account. I still don’t have access to the forums. I’d like to because with any game launch most of the good early research and tips are on those forums. I can’t get in though. I have managed to scrounge up a few good tools like:
Asics Gel-Nimbus 10:
Ok so I went for a run last night. The shoes are fantastic. Other than the fact that it was 92 degrees out and I hadn’t brought any water (there goes me thinking it’d be another short run) I had a really great run. I’ve got no pain and ran 2.5 miles before deciding that the lack of water probably wasn’t a good idea. Normally I can run 0.5 miles before I get some kind of discomfort in my shins and calves. Fantastic!
Best Buy:
This IM conversation sums it up…
I was a little worried when I received a notice from the running store saying that the Gel-Nimbus 9 was being discontinued. I received the notice several months ago. Since the shoes I currently have seem to be wearing out (yes, you really should change your running shoes often) I was extra worried.
Then over the weekend I received the new catalog from roadrunnersports.com. Lo and behold… the Gel-Nimbus 10:
Whoa! Sexy glamor shot!
So since I needed new shoes I ordered some right away. The initial reviews by people that had bought them were very encouraging: People who had upgraded from the 9 to the 10 were pleased with the changes.
Today I am resigning from my job.
As I sit here and think about it I feel really good about this resignation. The best I have ever felt about leaving a job actually. That hasn’t always been the case.
I haven’t had a lot of jobs, but I have never been fired so each departure has been a resignation. Sometimes those resignations feel bad. They feel like I am abandoning coworkers or a job half done or some other unfinished work that will bug me for a few months until I can finally let go of it. Even the job where I was severely mistreated by a manager who must have had something like rampant bipolar disorder… I felt a little guilty that I was walking out on the owner.
Update6: Game is going well now that I have a proper CD key. Unfortunately my forum account is still banned.
Update5: As I suspected Funcom did it on purpose. Not what I would consider good customer service. Anytime you burn thousands of loyal fans in order to punish a few dozen violators (who can’t play without paying subscription fees anyway) I think your priorities need to be reevaluated.
Update4: One of the commenters below says he was able to “Upgrade” his canceled account using the retail box code and it fixed the problem. Try that first. If not try Update3.
A little while back it occurred to me: The cats aren’t trying to scratch the crap out of the couch or their scrating pads anymore.
Last September the wife and I became parents to two little black and white sister kittens. They were, as kittens tend to be, playful, rambunctious, curious… scratchy. At the slightest provocation the little kitten claws were out and embedded in whatever had grabbed their attention. We’ve had cats before these two and we know that cats just love to scratch and destroy things, especially couches. To help mitigate some of that kitten vs. couch aggression we purchased a bunch of cat scratch pads and had one in almost every room in the house.
Ok so via wakoopa I discovered fold it. It’s a project by the University of Washington along with support from HHMI, DARPA, Microsoft and Adobe. The idea is cool. Apparently the rosetta@home project has had distributed computers working on folding proteins for a while, but there’s something missing with computers. The way computers crack the problem is by trying every possible combination one by one. There is no intuition. No instinct. No visual cues. It just keeps trying all the combinations until it clicks into one that works.
I write code. I don’t write every day, especially in the last two years since having been promoted deeper into management, but I still can and do code. To me writing code is a creative exercise. It’s like painting. I don’t think everyone feels that way. I think some people who have gotten into programming do so because it’s a well paying job, not because they like the creative aspects of it.
Every time you write there is some problem to overcome. Some challenge you’re facing that you are going to write an application to solve. Usually it’s a fairly straightforward process. Just like a painter would pick up frequently used brushes I pick up reusable code and get to work.
