Sometimes you just have to see WTF is going on. There’s been a wind storm, you forgot to test your Maglite ahead of time, and now you’re in the dark with your woman. Normally this would be awesome, but you’re right in the middle of Ticket to Ride and you’re about to win. What do you do? Reach for your trusty crank-powered LED lantern made by North Point.
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Desire often trumps logic. Sometimes we want something so badly that we overlook flaws inherent in people, jobs, movies, or games. In my case, Last Night on Earth. The game seemed perfect: a co-operative, competitive table top game that pits human heroes against my favorite undead. The game comes with five different scenarios, eight different playable heroes, and a mostly-randomized set of map tiles that mean each game is just a little bit different from the last. LNoE comes a TON of awesome collateral such as an old truck, gasoline, and townsfolk tokens, and most importantly, a bunch of plastic zombies. The production value on this game is outstanding. With scenario titles like “Die, Zombie, Die!” how could we go wrong?
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Folks who carry a concealed weapon do so to protect themselves or someone else. However, the vast majority of my time around my handguns is spent keeping them out of the view of others. When I first got my concealed carry permit in 1996 there weren’t the Web sites and forums we have today that talk about concealed carry. I was lucky enough to have a subscription to a few firearms magazines, and they ran some articles about keeping your concealed weapon concealed.

I ingested as much as I could from these articles, and learned some things that I still practice to this day. Little things, like always reaching above your head with your off-carry arm. If you’re a righty, you will take things off of the top shelf in the grocery store with your left hand. If you did so naturally, with your right, you may show your firearm. The inverse is true if you are picking something up below your waist. I used to just bend over and pick stuff up, now I squat as if I were wearing a skirt (there’s a scary image for you). I reach down with my right hand, as this helps your top cover your weapon better.
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Microsoft responded to the availability issues of online service Xbox Live! by offering a free game to their customers. I had originally hoped that they would offer users a 800 Microsoft Point credit towards any game(s) they wanted, but Microsoft announced that they were giving away Undertow instead. I downloaded the Undertow demo when it first came out, and I played it for about five minutes before quitting. Oh well, any free game is better than no free game, right?

Undertow will be available for free until Sunday, January 27th. Ars Technica is reporting that Xbox Live! is already suffering from mass downloads, so you may have to be patient.

I’m up in NYC on business for the day, so no real updates. Here’s a nice shot of Porter and Pearl cuddling up on the couch:

I keep at least two weeks’ worth of food in the pantry that only needs heat and/or water to prepare. I have a fair amount of canned goods — beans, mostly — and I have always been concerned about stacking them too high. I also have to remember to rotate my stock every time I buy more beans from the store. I was looking for home storage products and found the Three tier can rack shelf from Get Organized. I thought I could use the rack to save space, store my cans more safely, and more easily put new cans into rotation.
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I put a $99 deposit down on a smart car almost a year ago. At the time, I owned my motorcycle and a Mitsubishi Montero with about 140,000 miles on it. I thought the smart car would be good for zipping around town with another person, and for doodling up to DC when the weather wasn’t nice enough for the bike. I configured my black-on-black Passion last August. Smart USA promised they’d contact me when a test-drive event was being held, and then a dealer would contact me before the end of 2007. I was excited to be one of the first people in the US to own a smart car. Smart USA was only importing around 12,000 cars in 2008, and I would be among the first 1000 people to get one.

A lot has changed since then. The most notable thing was the purchase of my 2007 Mazda3Speed turbo five-door. It’s so fantastically awesome I couldn’t imagine wanting to drive something else besides Cylon. I imagined that the smart car would be great for driving around town until I found out that it didn’t have godly fuel economy. The car gets about 40MPG in real-world driving conditions. That’s about what my motorcycle gets, but it’s not earth-shatteringly efficient enough to put up with the tiny smart body. You can get mid- to high-30s from a Honda Fit, Toyota Yaris, or Nissan Versa and get so much more room plus better acceleration and top speed. Speaking of top speed, the high end of the smart car is about 82MPH. It waddles from 0 – 60 in about seventeen seconds, which be fatally slow on the main thoroughfare in town.

I did the math on the money I’d save driving the smart vs. the Mazda3Speed. I get about 21MPG around town in the Mazda. That’s a difference of 19MPG. Both cars use premium gas, so that’s a wash. I drive about 300 miles every week, for a difference of about $50 a month on gas. I’d only save about $600 a year on gas with the smart car. I’d have to put up with a tiny car, slow acceleration and low top speed and a car payment to save $600 a year. Bleh.

To top it all off, Smart USA never contacted me for a test drive, and I didn’t hear from the regional dealer until last week. If I hadn’t bought the Mazda3Speed I might have considered it, but not now. I canceled my order. Now that I have Kaylee and Cylon the smart car was just a dumb decision.

Happy birthday to my buddy from the DC-days! I know we haven’t seen each other as much since I moved to Virginia, but now that I’m working in your neck of the woods again that is going to change. Good luck with Rev 2.0, you’re going to be a great father.

Just wanted to say I’ve started my new job today. As most first days are at new jobs, things aren’t working right, permissions aren’t sorted out, and important people are busy, out of the office, or otherwise indisposed. Luckily I was able to start from home (I originally had been told I had to be in DC). I would have been pretty pissed to drive all the way up, only to find out that I couldn’t work on my first project due to permission problems.

Here’s the final lowdown for those of you playing along with the home game:

1. Headquarters is in DC.
2. I will still work from home, with trips up to HQ “as needed.”
3. I am reporting into the VP. I met the division president during my interview; I hope the three of us get to talk about 360 games again soon.
4. There is no timetable for a relocation to DC. However, this initial period is a “see how it goes” for my employer. All of their developers are in Texas, but they’re all on-site together. I am the only employee on the team working both remotely and in isolation. I imagine there will be a fair amount of scrutiny on my performance, especially at first.

Keep your fingers crossed, and thanks to everyone who vouched for me over the phone, in emails, and through LinkedIn.

I made myself some tea the other day in authentic Japanese-style tea mugs. They are ceramic and don’t have any handles. It seemed awfully lame to drink white tea in a big ol’ American coffee mug, right? Except my simple mind couldn’t decide between drinking and setting down the totally hot mug that kept burning my fingers. That hairy barbarian handle is on mugs for a reason! Yeeouch! My tea would be borderline tepid by the time the sides of the mug cooled enough to touch them. I had to race myself to finish up before the tea at the bottom turned cold.

I was given a very nice gift this holiday that solves this problem, but may create one of its own.
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