Serious (House) Business

I haven't been blogging here much since late October because my wife Becky is pregnant. She yelled at me back then for posting here and NOT mentioning it, so now she gets top billing. I HOPE YOU'RE HAPPY NOW BECKY! Also, I love you! Our daughter is due on March 12th, so not only did we have Thanksgiving in November, then Christmas in December and New Years shortly afterwards, but we experienced the full second trimester in there and transitioned into the third. What this meant for me was a shitload of house work needing to get done.

Just this weekend I managed to repair the chewed up carpet edges in our living room (thankfully the puppy out grew that!) with some cheap carpet tape and some scraps cut out of the linen closet upstairs, buy new blinds for the baby's room and the living room, and install a new bathroom wall cabinet to finally give us some storage in there.

To get the baby's room ready I had to paint the walls light green, then go around and repaint ALL of the trim in the room white semi-gloss from the hideous yellow color that was apparently painted over an even more hideous navy blue color. Why would you paint trim like that? I don't even know why you'd paint trim to begin with. Leave it white! Certainly there are exceptions to this, but not many that I've seen. I also had to climb up in the attic, drill down through the top of the wall, and cut a whole in the ceiling to install a ceiling fan/light which improved the comfort factor of the room a ton.

I figure it might be interesting to list ALL of the repairs and upgrades we've made to this house since we bought it back in 2008:

• Installed two new windows in the living room bay window
• Repainted, re-caulked the outside of the front bay window
• New locks on the front door
• New sliding glass door in the back/kitchen area
• Wood stairs from sliding door to back yard (replacing stone pavers stacked barely high enough)
• New Microwave installed above stove (replacing generic range hood/light)
• Installed carpet pad/carpet in main basement room (covering up bare concrete floor)
• Patched a custom vent in basement that never should have been cut into ductwork
• Installed Ceiling Fan/Light in both upstairs spare bedrooms
• Installed awesome fan/light switch in 1st spare bedroom
• New Heat pump and Central A/C Unit
• New refrigerator
• Pantry doors in the kitchen
• Closet doors in the 1st Bedroom

I think that's everything! The great thing about this list is that I believe everything except the new Heat Pump/Central AC was done by myself. The big things I had a lot of help from my father-in-law who is a general handyman but also does drywall as his day job so that helps with the "oh well it can be patched" factor of messing up in-home repairs.

PAX East 2011 and Springtime

March has pretty well flown by because the first week was essentially preparation for PAX East, then the convention itself, and a return home to allergies + a cold and then here we are today! By March 9th Becky and I were up in Boston for the first time (for either of us), and although it was cold we spent two awesome days around town with Becky's friend Jon who lives in Jamaica Plain near the South End of Boston. I'm not even going to pretend that I learned how Boston divides itself up, but suffice to say it seems like there are multiple south parts and multiple north parts that are all quite different from each other.

We spent the majority of our time in the harbor/convention center area because we were staying at a hotel there for PAX East, which took place from March 11th-13th. PAX itself was amazing and we had a lot of fun, especially so with meeting a bunch of people including Josh's friend Bryan that lives really freaking close to us but we had to go to Boston at the same time to finally meet! We also had a lot of fun running around town with Jon and then with Chris Tulach who acted as our tour guide for the majority of the Freedom Trail on the Monday after PAX. Boston is easily one of Becky's and my favorite cities now. Pretty much all of the food we had while in Boston was amazing, so that helps.

I think it was a great idea for us to spend a few extra days both before and after the con in town, and hopefully we get to do the same for PAX East next year which we're both already planning to attend. I wish that we had gone last year because then we could totally make PAX East a thing for us to attend every single one of, but alas last spring was not exactly the best of times for us and doing things like going on vacation (I was unemployed at the time).

Then pretty much within a few hours of returning to Maryland my allergies flared up and I quickly caught a cold, which I was happy that it waited until I got home where I could be more comfortable while sick, but it resulted in the next week after vacation going by relatively uneventfully and so here we are in late March and it feels like time has just flown by. Becky got sick also, but I think we're both coming off of our colds now so hopefully we'll be feeling better just in time for April!

I didn't get nearly as much reading done on the train up to and back from Boston as I thought I would. Turns out riding a train from 10pm to 8am is disorienting and left us both in a strange state of limbo during the travel because we couldn't really sleep well but it was clearly the time for sleeping. That said, reading progress has been going well especially in the last two weeks and I'm now 80% of the way through Wheel of Time book 9, Winter's Heart, and expect to be finishing it up any day now. I'm still planning on tackling A Game of Thrones before April 17th when the show starts on HBO, so hopefully I can accomplish that without many problems. After that it'll be back to WoT for the home stretch of books before the last book comes out early next year.

Oh, and I absolutely have to mention that I finally, FINALLY, finally got to buy the new Battletech boxed set which I've been dying to get my hands on since my first GenCon 3 years ago when it was out but I wasn't really in the position to buy a bunch of things while I was there. Even better than that, I got to buy the new boxed set and it hasn't even been released yet! Yay! Now let's play some F'ing Battletech!!!

End of February Update

Two days ago I finally finished reading Wheel of Time book 8, The Path of Daggers. I've started into book 9 - Winter's Heart and hope that I can finish it pretty quickly because I am eager to get into the first Game of Thrones book before April when the TV show comes on HBO, and I also have the first Dark Tower book that I've borrowed from my friend Josh that I am very excited to read. Of course after Winter's Heart there's still 5 more Wheel of Time books, but those will be handled in the rest of 2011 I think.

Just over a year ago Becky and I were both greatly enjoying being home all day together and watching the Winter Olympics, but we were also quite stressed with my unemployment situation. This year there's a bit of stress due to the government supposedly cutting a lot of funding for programs and even potentially not passing last year's budget which would cause gov't wide furlough days. Either way this is an issue for my line of work and I'm concerned but trying to stay positive and not let the stress get to me that much.

Other than those things life has been going really well and pretty steady lately. I'm enjoying doing web development and programming work every day as much as I enjoy doing architecture and design so my job satisfaction at the moment is very high. I'm also looking forward to using the knowledge I'm gaining on personal projects developing web-apps and other things that I've wanted to work on for a long time but until recently didn't have the knowledge to do it.

On the gaming front we've slowed down on how much we have been playing WoW but hopefully will keep playing it enough that it is worth while as an expense. I've gotten into the beta for the game Darkspore which I hadn't heard about until last week and it's incredibly fun, and will hopefully be getting into the early closed beta for Rise of Immortals which looks interesting as well.

Late Winter 2011

At least I hope it's late Winter now. Don't get me wrong, I love all of the seasons and I even really enjoy snow, but this year especially the winter months brought a significant lull in a lot of things for me - most specifically gaming and my D&D campaign. Now that it's February I'm happy to be getting back into the swing of things as people's schedules generally open up a bit more and weather stops becoming such a big threat for plans being canceled.

One thing that I did start doing in January was training at the Bushikai dojo here in Frederick, last night as my 7th class there and I'm really loving it. I'm still quite out of shape and the warm ups are wearing me out but I'm slowly improving and losing a little bit of weight along the way. Most importantly I'm having a great time doing it and am excited to begin attending their Kenjutsu (sword training) classes possibly as soon as next week.

With my new job duties as PHP/MySQL web developer (or whatever you want to call it) I've had a lot of reading to do for training, which has stalled my recreational reading. First, an update on the training progress. At the very end of January I'd read 123 pages on PHP and 68 pages on MySQL. My progress at the moment is:

• 200 pages on PHP (123 in 1 book, 77 in another)
  
• 68 pages on MySQL
• 52 pages on integrating PHP & MySQL together
• 18 pages on Cookies, Sessions, & Authentication
  
• 11 pages on Javascript

Progress through the books themselves has been slow the last week because I've been implementing a lot of what I'm learning and re-building our website to use PHP/MySQL. Now that I'm getting into the Javascript and Ajax stuff though I'm going to be reading more to get through all the information and then hopefully implement what I can from that as well. It's pretty exciting being able to finally put together a website or web based program that can do a lot of the things I've wanted to do for the last few years.

Reading Update: If I'd been reading along with my schedule I would be finishing book 8 - Path of Daggers right around now, instead I stalled at around 35% for a few weeks but am now getting back on track and am 44% through the book.

Recap of 2010

Last January I attempted very briefly to fill the void that a lack of a job gave me with doing a lot of my hobbies - drawing, writing, and playing games. I set some basic goals and I didn't even meet one of them. This year is a hell of a lot different, but I'm not to the point of setting up goals and certainly not to writing them online as even an unexpected promise to whoever reads them. Instead of setting goals right now, I'm working on accomplishing the ones that don't even need to be set for me to know they're there. Perhaps they were set years ago, or have always been there, but I'm doing them.

That may sound like I didn't do anything in 2010 then, if I didn't reach my goals. I know that's not the case. With that in mind, instead of goals for 2011 let's look back at some of the things that I accomplished in 2010:

• I GOT A JOB!

That could really be the end of the list right there and I'd be happy, but there are some other (less important but quite fun) items that I'm going to attempt to quantify in some way here. Possibly in some semblance of chronological order:

• Experienced one of the most enjoyable Winter Olympics ever with Becky, since we were both home all day/everyday - so much so that I'll consider taking vacation time for the next Winter Olympics
• Determined that my marriage to Becky is even more special than I could have imagined, since we could spend all day, everyday together and still have a LOT of fun and not ever get that mad at each other. I've had numerous couples tell me they can't imagine doing that and how much they would kill one another.
  
• Played a LOT of the Starcraft 2 beta, didn't play as much once it hit retail (but that may change soon) - also designed an awesome custom map for SC2 which I want to re-do for the retail build
  
• Ran 15 adventures of my D&D Campaign - I'd certainly love to do more, but greater than 1 per month is not a bad number!
• Attended a Bonsai beginner's class and actually learned how to pot, grow, and care for Bonsai properly (hint: I was doing a LOT of stuff wrong)
  
• Attended GenCon 2010 and had a blast
  
• Read through the entire Harry Potter series (for the first time) in preparation for seeing the last movie
• Read 1984, and realized I (and all of my friends) should have read it years ago
  
• Finished The Shadow Rising (Wheel of Time book 4) in September, finally, after almost a year of very slowly getting through it. Then finished books 5 and 6 in roughly one month each, and got half way through book 7 in December
• I started and continued the Architect DM series at Critical Hits, which has been insanely fun to write and seems to be received quite well too
• Movies we saw in theaters: Iron Man 2, Inception (twice), RED, Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, Tron: Legacy (maybe some others, will update if I remember)
• Becky and I resubbed to World of Warcraft for Cataclysm (god help us) in early December - and we're loving it

Reading Update: I am currently 67% through Wheel of Time book 5 - A Crown of Swords. My progress stalled for a week or two during the holidays for various reasons. We were pretty busy, but also I got several new books before the holidays and as Christmas presents so that naturally slowed down my progress because I wanted to read them a bit instead of just focusing on Wheel of Time. The very last Wheel of Time book was also pushed back to a 2012 release date, which means I have more than a year to read the last 5 books and one prequel which is more than enough time. I'm going to throw a few other books in the mix but will also try to get through WoT as soon as possible so I can talk things over with Becky without fear of spoilers.

Wheel of Time Character Mapping

So I've been thinking about doing an experiment by listing the characters that appear in each chapter of Wheel of Time as I read it (starting mid book 7 because that's where I am now). Partially this comes from the fact that now there are so freaking many noble and Aes Sedai secondary characters, many with very similar names, that even I can't keep them straight!

Also this is because I generally try to avoid spoilers, because I know of at least one person that reads this blog sometimes that hasn't read all of the books. In my opinion listing the characters as they appear won't be any kind of real spoiler, but still I'll keep things as spoiler free as I can. Here's a bit of what it would look like, but in practice I'm not sure it gives much without spoilers and would be a lot of work.

Book 7 - A Crown of Swords

Chapter 11 - An Oath

• Egwene Al'Vere
• Meri - mean servant of Egwene's
• Romanda - Aes Sedai, rival of Lelaine
  
• Lelaine - Aes Sedai, rival of Romanda
  
• Sheriam - Aes Sedai, on Egwene's side
  
• Lord Gareth Bryne
• Theodrin Dabei & Faolain Orande - Aes Sedai
  
• Halima / Aran'gar
• Tiana - Aes Sedai?
• Siuan Sanche
• etc.
  

I'm thinking that having my own wiki for Wheel of Time might be easier and better in every way. I'd build it as I go through the books and hopefully because of that it would be much more comprehensive than the other wikis that are out there. I would contribute to them, but I can't at the moment because they are riddled with spoilers so I just avoid the existing wikis as a practice. However, Becky tells me there isn't any one wiki that is as informative or comprehensive as they should be.

Reading Update: I am 41% through book 7 and now very happy to be almost 50% of the way through the series (minus the final book which isn't out yet). Towers of Midnight coming out set me back about 3% in total but I caught that up and more over the last two books.

Is it technically Winter yet? I'm pretty sure it is but for some reason it still feels very much like Fall to me even though it is super cold outside. Also, it doesn't feel like the week of Christmas at all, but it still feels MUCH better than last year for obvious reasons! :)

Wheel of Time Thoughts

I am now 51% through Wheel of Time book 6 - Lord of Chaos and I'm starting to progress a bit faster (as usual). It's usual because right around half way through most of Jordan's books he starts to really pick up the action and build to the finale (go figure, right? Who would structure a book that way? Oh, everyone? I see...) so I'm naturally inclined to keep reading and to read more often through out the day.

I generally avoid talking much about what I'm reading in WoT because I want to avoid spoilers for anyone reading this, but my continuing discussions with Becky are enjoyable and I'd love to have some of those here as well. The other big problem is I really don't want anyone in comments here or in discussing it to spoil anything for me, so please keep in mind that I am only half way through Lord of Chaos and I'll probably have Becky read any comments here first (though I'm assuming there won't be any, so no big deal) just in case!

For today I'm not going to spoil anything big, but still if you don't want any spoilers from WoT up to and through book 6 don't read the rest of this paragraph. Minor Spoilers now: I find it very fascinating that Jordan waited until about 380 pages (38% through the book) into the 6th book of the series to finally reveal that Tigraine was Rand's mother. You find out in book 3 (IIRC) that his mother was a wetlander that entered the waste and became a maiden of the spear, and that his father was an Aiel, but the reveal in this chapter of book 6 is pretty damn important. It's important because you also find out that the Aes Sedai Gitara Moroso was the one that foretold the Dragon being reborn, and that she sent Tigraine's brother (Luc, OMG another big thing that I can't wait to find out more about) to the north and she then sent Tigraine away from Caemlyn so that Rand would end up being born on the cliffs of Dragonmount (or wherever). This is all super important not just because it explains the events that led to Rand's birth, but also because after that Gitara Sedai is the one who set Suian's and Moiraine's plans into action which is really the whole set up for the beginning of Eye of the World. Thus, to me this revelation of events is really what began the whole series of books and so to me this is easily one of the most important chapters of the series so far.

Spoilers aside and done with, I just like looking at the fact that Jordan waited until this book to reveal the beginnings of the events in Eye of the World. I'm not saying I think he should have done it sooner or later, just marveling at how and where it was done. Also that it was done in a sort of casual sense with just a noble woman in Caemlyn talking to Rand and mentioning something to him. Other things that really interest me are how much the Forsaken are characters in these later books, and how the only holdovers from the 2nd age are essentially the bad guys.

All of that just makes me want to read faster, so that's what I'm doing! I won't be finishing this book by the end of November (only 2 days away, geez) but I should wrap it up sometime in early December. This time of year is always rough for scheduling and running D&D, and I am amazed that right around this time last year I was struggling so much with scheduling that I was on the very brink of canceling the whole campaign. Thankfully (VERY thankfully) Josh rallied his roomates and came up on December 5th last year for their first romp into the Elemental Chaos, which was extremely fun and resolved me to keep things going. This year I am content to keep it going even if I don't run once in December, though I very much hope I can.

In other news Thanksgiving was very fun this year, we went to Becky's grandmother's house and had a fun time with all of the family and especially hanging out with their cousins. I'm hooked on the Sam Adams Winter Variety boxes - not just to get the 2 bottles of sweet, sweet Chocolate Boch that the O got me hooked on (thanks Andrew :P ) but also because I love the Winter Lager and pretty much every other variety in there.

One Year Later

This past Friday, November 19th, marks exactly one year since I was laid off from my last job. It's interesting to me that it feels like a very long time ago, but also doesn't feel like it's been nearly a year since I worked there. If you haven't read my other posts from the summer of this year, what followed me being laid off was 7 months of very stressful unemployment and worrying, though it also managed to be LESS stressful than my former job was for various reasons. Thankfully, back in early June I was hired by the company I work for now and things have been going along fantastically!

With Thanksgiving coming up this week, it's no real surprise to me that I don't remember the holiday season last year very clearly at all. I'd just been laid off, and was starting into my job search full steam and also getting unemployment (and continuing health insurance) worked out. This year things are on the upswing and continue to look up for the future, so I imagine this holiday season will be one that sticks with me for a while. As I continue to do posts on here over the next year, I'm going to make it an ongoing goal to reflect to the same time frame of the last year and compare how things are going. Obviously this time last year things were not so good, and so perhaps it is this year for Thanksgiving that I have more to be thankful for than I have in many years previous.

In more regular news, we went to a midnight showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1, which was enjoyable. It is the first Harry Potter movie I've read the book before I've seen the movie, and it's a distinctly different experience though many of the changes or bizarre plots that I completely understand now still irk me because I know if I hadn't read the book I would have had major issues with the movie.

I've also finally (and hopefully) winterized my Trident Maple bonsai tree that I got back in late June. I'm really hoping it survives the winter in good health and I can really take care of it and shape it through the spring & summer next year. It's in a bed of mulch inside of a clear plastic container on our back steps, because we don't have a shed or anything to protect it from the more harsh weather while it hibernates. The tree was probably one of my first gifts/purchases after getting the new job so I really hope to cultivate it for many years to come!

Reading Update: I slacked for the early-middle part of November because of some new D&D books I got and wanted to read, but I'm back on track for Wheel of Time book 6, Lord of Chaos, and am currently 23% of the way through it. This means I probably won't finish it by the end of November, but hopefully by some point in early December and then I can start into the next book before the end of the year!