Rorschach.net

Just boarded our last flight and we’re on our way to San Diego. Hopefully Roe is happy to see us and the milk isn’t to spoiled. We had a great time with family – but it will be nice to sleep in our own bed.

I was working out Tuesday morning in the resort gym. Due to an accident in the spa of an undisclosed nature, the “gym” had been relocated in a conference room in the hotel while they remodeled the spa facilities. We found this tidbit of information goreishly fascinating. We had a great time creating imaginary scenarios such as the hair trimming ear nick – or the hot wax incident which could have caused the tragedy. I any case, the move had a significant benefit as it placed the cardio machines facing several sets of French doors overlooking the dolphin pool.

Hawk’s Kay has 6 dolphins on staff for resort guests to visit with. I’m not sure about their medical plan – but one of the dolphins had an honorary degree for facilitating marine research so the gig can’t be all that bad. As I was working out the kinks from flight and attempting to atone for the calories of cookies consumed the night prior, I got to watch the dolphins play morning tag. It was a pretty cool way to start a morning. You could tell the two most energetic dolphins were siblings as the younger followed the older around copying every move and attempting to drive their older sister nuts. In spite of the irritation, the older dolphin was probably on strict orders to keep track of the younger brother, watching out for sharks and fishing nets.

My family is similar. We are at once responsible for each other even as we goad each other with silly pranks and teasing. Families are a bundle of contradicting emotions, shared experiences and expanding personalities. Siblings can be as irritating as they are loved. Yet when it comes to difficulty or hardship, the reality is clear. The only person allowed to torment my younger brother’s is me. In my family, when the sharks are spotted, everyone comes running.

We were in Florida for a family reunion on the Tobia side. And while my “family” members are many beyond that, they are all fiercely loyal to the shared family history. The history that we struggle through, laugh about, embellish on often and which we get to make up as we go along through life together. Whether we’re gathering for Thanksgiving, a card game, a boat trip or a tropical vacation, there is the same sense of security in this love. Even as I’m being swindled out of my poker money or tortured with reminders of my off-key crooning to my younger brother, I know that I am surrounded by folks who would take me in without hesitation and fight of a shark attack if needed. I am blessed to have not needed such drastic support, but as my life’s path twists about, I step more sure footed because of it, I take more chances and at the end of the day – I sleep better and I hope those in my widening family on all sides do as well.

I am a big fan of Alton Brown. The first Good Eats episode I saw was the episode about tea. I found it by random chance while flipping channels on a sleepy Saturday morning. His approach to cooking, to actually teach cooking instead of a paint-by-numbers, follow-this-recipe show with a splash of Mr. Wizard science and wackiness really appealed to me. I’ll take him over Martha or Emeril any day.

So if you follow the link above you’ll see his website is being redone and hints of a podcast. Woot!

I’ve got to try to get to the beach today. We’ve got the biggest waves in ten years going on yesterday and today. I’m not suicidal so I won’t be going into the water, but it should look pretty cool. If I can get out of work before the sun goes down I’ll try to get some pictures.

Mark your calendars. It got cold enough on the night of December 18th, 2005 that we turned on the heater for the first time at the new place. The low was 40 degrees, we set the furnace for 67 degrees.

That is all.

Since we’re off to the Keys on Christmas Day and the day before is the 33rd anniversary of Paul’s arrival into this world, we celebrated his birthday a little early. We spent the night at the W Hotel in downtown San Diego and got to spend the weekend pretending we were true urbanites. Since we live 15 minutes from downtown – we’re probably considered mid-urbanites.

While we shopped, opened presents, ate a fantastic meal of complicated fancy foods and slept on a feather bed, Roe spent the first night with Kelli – his new dog sitter. We thought a test run while we were within driving distance was a good idea before we left for Florida and it seems to have gone quit well. Kelli’s only negative comment about Roe was on his snoring. Fortunately she found it cute and still considers him a sweet dog so we’re on for next week’s trip.

I’m supposed to be sitting here at my computer now doing some work. Since I will be out for a week and next week is shortened by business planning sessions and parties, I have much to do. Unfortunately, I am suffering pre-vacationitus and have already become mentally distracted about my vacation and so the nose-to-the-grindstone thing is just not working for me. Which means that until it becomes perilously close to the time were I would miss my project deadline, I will not get much done. I have to wait for the fear factor to kick in, sending appropriate amount of panicked adrenaline into my designer brain to get the ideas rolling and the project complete. It’s a stressful way to get things done but usually effective. I wish I could manually start it but only true deadlines initiate the reaction. Wish me luck!

Back in the day I had heard about a game coming out for the PC called Treasure Planet: Battle at Procyon. Yes, it was a tie in to the animated movie that came out that year, but the game itself was developed by a group called Barking Dog. They were responsible for the add-on to Homeworld called Homeworld:Cataclysm which I enjoyed. Anyway, the Wal-Mart in Larrytown got their signals crossed and put the game onto the shelf about a week early. I snagged it and had a lot of fun with it. I could appreciate their attempt at broad appeal (it was a Disney game after all) but still have a core of gaming goodness like ship customization and targeting specific ship parts. I said as much in a review I did (before the game hit the official street date) and had a little correspondence from one of the developers thanking me for the kind words. Unfortunately it wasn’t much of a commercial success, but few games are.

Fast forward to now. The guys over at Penny Arcade ended up posting about a new space strategy game in development called Sword of the Stars (SotS). It sounds up my alley so I go check it out. It turns out that the Barking Dog guys struck out on their own and formed Kerberos Productions and were developing SotS. Even after three years the guy still remembered me and welcomed me on board with the new endeavor.

The primary source of information about SotS is the discussion board where the team posts about 10 times a day and have a really good conversation going with the fans. Unfortunately for a new person it’s not very easy to figure out what the game is all about. So I decided to do something about it. I’ve been wanting to set up a wiki for some time. You may have heard of the most famous wiki called Wikipedia a free and collaborative encyclopedia. I figured a website that anyone could edit and contribute to would be the perfect medium to have the community itself gather all the thousands of pieces of information about the game into something more organizable and reference-able.

Thus on Friday was born the SotS Wiki hosted and administrated by yours truly with the blessing of the developers. It’s taking off quite well, and was surprisingly easy to set up and manage. Please feel free to take a look and let me know what you think.

I downloaded some more photos from Dad of the Thanksgiving Trip on the gallery. In spite of the visits to the doggie and people ER – that was a fun week. It was the perfect balance of hanging out and relaxing, seeing the sites and family bonding. We spent a lot of time early in the week by the pool and but other activities included a Chargers, game, a day spa, the gym to play racquetball and workout, the San Diego Zoo, the beach, a tour of a soviet sub and two sailing ships, Balboa park, the beach again, the gasslamp district for dinner and a little shopping.

Now we’re on to the next Holiday and our tree is officially up. I find it difficult to write Christmas cards without the twinkly lights.

This Google Video is very cool. All hail the Russian Prince of Persia!

Windows Live Local is the response to Google Maps. Enhancements over Maps includes zoom with the mouse wheel and directions from/to mouse clicks.

Yay for competition!