Things have been quite hectic to say the least! I got a new position at work and it has no slack time – there is always something to do. As such, no time to write things here.

I have found an app for my iPod Touch that will directly interface with this site, so there may be more content yet!

I’ve made a convert out of Jason. Ever since he learned of my own public journal here, he devoured just about every post I’ve got, commented on a few, and felt hungry for more blog. I pointed him over to wordpress.com, and now he’s got his own corner on the Internet.

Jason’s a co-worker here and we regularly chat about this and that, many times worth discussing with the wide world. So go check it out, already! It’s also over on the list of links on the side for your consumption later.

It’s weird to run into people from work in the outside world.

…especially when you run into them at Wal-Mart.

…and they’re the executive custodian.

Just sayin’.

I can post again! Well, I always have been able to, but things have settled down considerably at work. I may have mentioned it before, but the call volume has been through the roof for the past 6-7 weeks, and my news queue grew amazingly fast. Everyday and throughout each day I check my RSS feed for Slashdot and add bookmarks for interesting news stories so I can view them on my downtime between calls.  Unfortunately, with little to no downtime, the list only grew. Sure I could knock out a couple on one of my short breaks, but they were comparative drops in the bucket.

But now the list is done, and I don’t know what to do with myself! …almost. Every nerd knows the first thing to do when something happens, no matter how minute, is to alert the Internet! Consider this a klaxon for idle hands, my dear Internets.  Now I can get back to posting regularly, and playing with game design docs!

And to make this post not nearly as content-free as advertised, there was an MPEG Game from eons ago called Silent Steel. You played a submarine captain for a nuclear sub in the mid-Atlantic and provided canned responses in fairly complicated dialogue trees. At some point in the game, you can visit the torpedo loading deck and talk the the chief there (don’t worry this is going somewhere, trust me – and Ame, you’ve heard all about this at least once before).

“Hi Skipper, what brings you down to the Devil’s Workshop?”

At the time I was playing the game, I thought it was a just a really cool name, but it wasn’t until years later I realized it was a pun. Submarines are part of the Navy. In the Navy, the term “all hands on deck” may ring a bell.  Torpedos on a nuclear sub aren’t fired all that often, so the hands manning the station aren’t doing much with their time – idle hands. And we all (should) know “idle hands are the Devil’s workshop.”

*groan*

I know that if you have to explain it, a joke loses its comedy almost instantly, so I’ll leave on another one.

Q: What noise does a human make when he’s crushed by a giant calculator-shaped robot?
A: sqrt

PS: Not one single spelling error! Eat taht that!

Check this video out!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/7597266.stm

This isn’t one of those freak-out videos where you watch closely and then a zombie head screams at you at full volume. In this pseudo-National Geographic video, the man on camera catches and releases a Smoky Jungle Frog. It has a defense mechanism when caught, in addition to pooping in your hand, and makes a sort of cat-like wailing grunt. I can’t describe it well, but check the video out.

I sometimes get cool things like this from Tom here at work. Tom played a big role in my orientation training class here at work. He’s kind of a lunkish jock, but he’s pretty sharp and always friendly.

And this isn’t a bad thing, no, really! As you know, I work Friday through Monday, but the office is suffering some emergency maintenance issues. The space is flooded and inoperable, so no one can really do anything until the mess is cleaned up. The best part is I’m getting paid for the time.

Of course, there’s always bad news, and it’s really my own fault. I’ve been playing Mother 3 during my downtime at work; it really helps kill the time, and it’s a great game to boot. Every night before I left  work for home, I’d make a backup of my EEPROM (save-game file) just so I could have the option of continuing the game at home. This past Friday came and went, I worked, I played Mother 3, but it was the only night that I didn’t make a backup. I was at the final final final boss of the game when I it was time  to leave, and guess what I didn’t do? That’s right. No backup of the save-game.

Now I’m all freaking out (not really, it’s just a game) that my progress since my last backup (a significant amount!) could be lost. What if the hard drive on my desktop computer at work was affected? There are any number of scenarios that could warrant either a hard drive replacement or wiping it out and restoring it fresh! I’m sure I’m just being paranoid, and the file is fine, but the chance is there.

So, take the good with the bad though. Ame and I have really enjoyed these days off.

A00ll but one of comic links on the left there are blocked at work. That’s my rotation they’re messing with! It’s only a matter of time until The Abominable Charles Christopher gets the axe and worse yet, this very site! There is a way of submitting a ticket to the appropriate people, but that just opens a can of worms I’m not willing to deal with.

The cool thing is, even if I can’t post directly, I can still email the posts in. Wait, can I? The dimly-lit corners of my brain tend to think this is the case. Fortunately, I have people on the outside to slip me contraband and what not through other cracks.

But the specific blocks aren’t really what bother me. YouTube’s block is on-again off-again, and I can understand blocking that website, I really can. If you want to save on bandwidth, boom. Cut streaming media. For awhile, some parts of Slashdot were blocked, but I think that was a case of someone not really understanding what it was.  Webcomics? That I don’t really get. I imagine one complaint would be “someone may find it objectionable.” So? I’m the one viewing it not you (them/they/etc), and it’s not pornography. Sigh. I guess I just never “got” the whole political correctness movement, or maybe I outright reject it in its current form.

Starting about November of last year, I got this painful, itchy rash on the knuckles of my hands. I blamed the new dry and cold weather for it, and left it at that. I would put cream on them every now and then, and that seemed to help a little, but it was still there.

After much nagging from Ame, I went to a dermatologist last month to get my hands looked at. As it turns out, I have these markers in my DNA that express themselves as a rash when I get too much stress. Eczema. Woo.

Oh hey, and guess what started in November? My new job. Training started late October, so I’ve officially been at this new job for a year, and this is the cause of my newly expressed eczema. I guess this skin condition really speaks to how much this job stresses me out.

I’ve come to the conclusion that I got this eczema from my dad. Besides this itchy, painful rash, I’ve always had a very mild strange skin thing on my arms and legs. It doesn’t cause any discomfort in the least, it’s just a little weird. My dad also has this stuff in the same spots on his body. Also, when I was growing up, I had strep throat infections a lot. One of the extra bonuses to having the markers for eczema is if you catch strep throat, there is a small chance of expressing a form of psoriasis. It didn’t happen every time, but again, I did catch that damn bug an awful lot as a kid, and those damned white dots appeared every now and then.

Thanks for the skin, Dad.

I’ve mentioned this before, but I write almost all of my posts ahead of time and they post on an automatic schedule, once a day every weekday. It takes advantage of downtime at work and the times I can’t otherwise be at a computer.

Sometimes it’s hard coming up with things to write about. Sometimes life is boring and doesn’t change much. The routine is the routine, and nothing notable or new comes around. I could talk about the economy, politics, or whatever else is in the news, but that’s kind of blah. That involves me broadening my horizons.

Steve at my old job used to call me a knowledge-miser, hoarding knowledge for no purpose other than to simply know. I suppose that’s mostly true, but now that I think about it a bit harder, it’s more specialized than that. I prefer to deepen the knowledge in fields that I already know about, or, rather, interested in. That sounds silly now that I’ve stated it though, that’s straight-up preference. I’m not interested in what I’m not interested in. Big shocker there.

So when there’s nothing to write about, I can always ramble!

The Game Development bug is chewing on my hide once again and I need to scratch it. The long and short of it is I’d really like to get back into professional game development. All jobs have their bullshit, and game development is not an exception by any stretch of the imagination, but it is the only job I looked forward to crossing the office’s threshold in the morning. There were some times when the drama meter was high, but I still enjoyed my stressful job.

In my copious amounts of free time, I’m going to be putting together some soup-to-nuts levels in Unreal Tournament 3. I can consider myself successful if I can complete two fully-functioning multiplayer maps. I personally think Deathmatch can be a showcase of skills, from both design and aesthetic perspectives. There’s a level of craftsmanship there, and they are the most accessible to an outsider. Bombing Run is simply a hell of a lot of fun. After-hours Bombing Run matches at Barking Lizards rank up there with my most fun gaming moments ever.

Additionally, I need to make a space here to showcase my talents, so you may see some slight changes to the page-listing here – probably in the form of some links across the top for organization and ease of use. Currently, the Page Listing on the sidebar is a bit lacking. I’d like to promote its visual importance.

So that’s the plan, and I would like to share what I have so far, but I think that’s better-suited to the forthcoming ‘Projects’ page. To be continued…

“You watched it! You can’t unwatch it! Stay tuned for more…”