If 2008 was any year but a leap year, I’d be achieving the impossible today. Yes, friends, this is post # 365 in my streak. The only thing separating me from making an entire year of uninterrupted posts is a date known as February 29th. If it wasn’t for that day, today would be the 21st instead of the 20th, and I’d be starting my second year of nonstop posts tomorrow. Alas, the celebration must wait one more day.
I think that the amount of time the members of my game project group spent talking online today might just rival the amount of time we’ve talked about it for the entire semester up to this point. Not really, but we spent a good 3-4 hours in two sessions this afternoon preparing what was going to be discussed in the presentation that we’re giving on Tuesday. If we would have discussed everything that we talked about today back at the start of the semester, we’d probably have made more progress than where we’re at right now (which is damage control and focusing on the presentation over developing the actual game). Oh well, good learning experience if I ever decide to do something like this again. That’s right, I want this as a career — guess it really was a good learning experience. :)
Personal - Dallas
Ok, so we did have two fully functional TVs with cable still in our house, but not having the HDTV working upstairs cut my TV watching time down to about 30 minutes today (basically, while I was eating lunch and then a tiny bit of the Mavs game). Oh yeah, I didn’t tell that story yet. Thursday when I got home, I went upstairs to turn the TV on. Expecting nothing out of the ordinary, I walked back downstairs for a minute or two and then came back up. The TV was off, so I just assumed that the remote had missed the sensor. Well, when I looked closer, there was a red light flashing on the TV that I had never seen before. Aware that this was probably not a good sign, I looked closer and saw that it was the Lamp LED that was illuminating which meant that we had to order a $200 lamp for the TV to make it display pretty pictures once again. Since no actual stores carried them in stock, we had to order it directly from Sony, and as a result it won’t be here until Tuesday. Yesterday I virtually wasn’t home at all so the no TV was fine, but today, tomorrow, and Monday afternoon all are making me find alternative methods of entertainment.
Speaking of, I went on another cleaning spree today, although this time my focus was the desk in my room. Fully aware that there was quite a bit of stuff that could be relocated, I went about moving some stuff around (and occasionally even throwing something away). Right now it is still a WIP, and anyone who knows my cleaning style is aware that this means my room currently looks like it was attacked by a tornado. Oh well, just one more thing to do this weekend, right?
Personal - Dallas
Even more specifically, it’s pizza party day. I had a pizza party at UTD right after Linear Algebra for one of the scholarships that I’ve received for the past two years, and it was your typical Pizza Hut and drinks party. Nothing special, but the food was good. After the baseball game tonight (which we won 11-0), there was a “senior party” (which was a misnomer since everyone was actually invited, including me) over at a player’s house where there was pizza. This pizza, however, was not your standard Pizza Hut. No, this party included 5 different types of Campisi’s pizza, El Fenix queso and chips, and a gigantic chocolate cake. When you think about it, I guess both parties fit their locations just fine: economical pizza for the college party, and way more expensive but also insanely delicious food for the HP one. :)
The baseball manager has something else that he has to do tomorrow afternoon, so I won’t be going over to his house to play Rock Band. This may be for the better since it means I can come home and at least have the opportunity to work on the game project some. Now, the time may not actually be spent working on it (I actually do have some other homework that I need to do this weekend), but at least the possibility is there. In reality though, I’ll probably just play WoW or something.
Personal - Dallas
After a record-obliterating year, there has to be some big announcement for the 4th anniversary of this blog that is coming up in less than a month. The only problem is, I haven’t thought of what I want it to be yet. The problem isn’t that I have then grand visions but no clue how to implement them, but I just don’t have any visions period. A theme change seems far too anti-climactic, but that’s really the only thing I can come up with at the moment. Actually, I do have one idea, but it’s more along the lines of a project that I’ve been meaning to do for a while rather than something directly related to this.
A week from today my computer currently out at UTD will be coming home, and my monitors will once again be reunited in the greatness known only as “dual monitors”. I’m still planning on a triple monitor setup for sometime this summer, but if I get an iPhone and then feel compelled to get a Mac mini, one of the 17″ will likely go be dedicated to it and I’ll just have a widescreen and 1 17″ on my main computer. All this means that the lifespan of this Shuttle is very limited, with a possible resurrection for the two weeks that I’ll be gone to Japan down in my parents’ bedroom since I’ll be stealing my laptop and taking it with me across the Pacific.
Personal - Dallas
So, I went ahead and went out to the place that wanted to interview me today (even though I never received an email from them like I was told I would), and I basically spent 20 minutes talking with them for them to quickly discover that while my skill set on my resume was what they were looking for, my interests and summer schedule probably weren’t going to be a good match. At this point, probably only Microsoft and Gearbox would meet the interests part, and only Gearbox would be able to handle the schedule part, so that pretty much narrows down who I’ll be interested in talking to over the next couple weeks.
Speaking of Gearbox, I’m almost done with their test, but I probably will opt for sleep tonight over trying to finish it up. The lady sent it to me Friday afternoon and said to get it back to her within 7 days, so by my count I have two more days to finish it. I’ll get it done tomorrow because of my insanely full Friday schedule, but the fact that I’m not getting it done tonight doesn’t make me feel pressured for time. The parts I have left now are mainly the “essay” questions, so it’s really more writing than actual coding at this point.
Personal - Dallas
Next Monday, I will do what was once thought impossible. I will make good on a promise that I made almost four years ago. I will make the title of this blog mean something. That’s right, I’m now just a week away from having made 366 consecutive posts to this blog. This streak, once broken, will probably live until the day that this blog is no longer hosted on the internet, as I’m not sure I could ever pull off another year of never missing (but coming awfully close a couple times) a day of posting something here.
After the game in Forney tonight, one of the moms handed me an invitation to the baseball banquet on the 28th. I’ve RSVPed to go, and it’ll be the first HP sports banquet I’ve been to since the football one right after we won state. Also, I’ll now be going over to the baseball manager’s house on Saturday afternoon rather than Friday after the game. If nothing else, it’ll make it easier for me to get a post in on Friday.
Personal - Dallas
Tomorrow marks the last class meeting before our beta day for the game project, and I still have quite a bit of work to do before then. Not every bug necessarily has to be solved by beta, but basically that needs to be the only thing left that needs to be done. After the monumental milestone of actually getting a combat engine working for last week, the advances I’ve made since then have been extremely minor. There’s really only one input remaining for the CE, and the rest of the additions are purely cosmetic. Then, however, comes the task of porting it to a PvP engine. Hopefully that process will go smoothly because if it doesn’t, I may not be sleeping a lot (or at all) next weekend.
My work on the Gearbox test is coming along nicely; I’ll probably be ready to send it back to them on Wednesday. Some of the questions that they have on it are really interesting and fun to work out if for no other reason that just being a logic puzzle. I guess the fact that I find that entertaining shows why I enjoy being a CS major so much.
Personal - Dallas
Man, such a long title for wanting to have that play-on words (and it needed to be that long for the reference to be apparent). Anyway, while I did some work in Flash today, I procrastinated doing more work by performing a rearrangement/cleaning of the “storage” closet in my mom’s bead room. It was the location that many of my boxes got placed right after we moved, and by adding more and more stuff in the closet, it was becoming an overcrowded, unnavigable mess. Now, however, it is (more) organized with room to actually step in and find whatever it is that you might be looking for.
Aside from school tomorrow, I don’t have any big plans. Tuesday I have work with Mr, McDonald and a baseball game in Forney, on Wednesday I have an internship interview (grrr…) with a company called Avalon Consulting in McKinney (because they didn’t have the predicted reaction to the fact I’d be gone for half of June), and Friday after the baseball game at HP, I might be going over to the baseball manager’s house and playing Rock Band. I say “might” because this was something that I was told that we were going to do at the end of our Halo 3 game playing last night, so we’ll see if anything materializes out of it.
Personal - Dallas
I did virtually nothing today except rest, play WoW, and watch some TV. This is why Saturdays exist, but that means that I can’t do the same tomorrow since there is some work that I actually need to get done over the weekend. More specifically, I need to get more work done on the game project. The semester and that class is coming down to the wire, so there will be a slight crunch again, but then I (hopefully) never have to deal with Flash again, or if I do, I’ll know a lot more about it up front.
I’m about to play Halo 3 on Live with the other baseball trainer and manager, so hopefully I won’t make a complete fool of myself. Sam knows how much I suck at Halo 3, but other people are still slightly naive about my lack of console FPS skills. Oh well, as long as I don’t act like a complete noob, I should be fine. :)
Personal - Dallas
Question: As a teacher, how can you determine that a test is too long?
Answer: When every single one of your students is nowhere close to being done with it at the time class is supposed to end!!
At 3:20 (when Linear Algebra is supposed to end), I was basically done with half of the test. It took me another 50 minutes (so approximately 2x the length of class) to finish it, and when I left then over half the class was still there. I’m sorry, but a test that is that long shouldn’t be given. Either shorten the thing or put more tests throughout the semester so that there’s less information between each one. I mean, there’s all of two weeks of class left. Is it really necessary to have a test this close to our final?
HP completely dominated Pearce tonight 13-0, so now with only 3 district games left, we seem to be in a very good position for making the playoffs. After I got home tonight, I found an email from Gearbox with a 10 question test for me to complete within a week pertaining to an internship opportunity. They use the test as a way of weeding out candidates before inviting them in for interviews, so the fact that I got it in no way means that I’ll be offered an internship with them. If I am, however, and they’re willing to work with my slightly weird schedule for June, I’d take it in a heartbeat.
Personal - Dallas