The Daily Goob » Personal – Seattle

No Trust At All For This Trip

Jeff — Fri, 25 May 2012 06:45:06 +0000

There will be an early post coming tomorrow, I can assure you of that. If it was a standard "leave Seattle at 4:00, arrive in Dallas around 10:00 or so” day then I’d probably hold off and make a Dallas post. Route me through Chicago though and don’t even have me scheduled to land in Dallas until after midnight? That’s a disaster waiting to happen if I’ve ever seen one. Direct flight, 4 hour buffer = low risk gamble. Connection through a city that doesn’t have the best travel record + under a 2 hour buffer = I don’t really feel like having to explain that’s how my streak ended.

Due to some change in plans, it looks like Chili’s will just have to be restricted to a single outing this trip. First of all I actually thought my flight was closer to 2:30-3:00, so that made an airport lunch make more sense. More importantly though, after coordinating with Will about Tuesday I’m no longer going to be driving and parking at the airport, so getting there at the appropriate lunch hours would just be too maddening to my schedule. I’m sure I can find something as equally awesome worth eating away from the airport though.

Bound To Silence

Jeff — Thu, 24 May 2012 06:53:39 +0000

Today marks one of those days where if I told you everything I could about it, Microsoft wouldn’t be all that pleased. Actually pretty much every day is like that in some form or fashion, but today is one of those special days. Since I prefer to keep getting a paycheck, that information will just have to remain with me for the time being. Rest assured that all you people in the rest of the world will be clued in eventually.

Tomorrow marks my last full day at work until next Wednesday thanks to my non-optimal flight routing. Friday I’ll be leaving around lunch (and chances are high I’ll go to the airport slightly early for a Chili’s fix), and then Tuesday I don’t land until lunch time as well (a possible repeat visit?). No, I won’t have Chili’s three times in the span of five days; realistically it’ll probably end up being one airport and one Dallas trip just since I’ve been deprived of it for so long. Curse you for not having more Seattle locations, Chili’s…

Now Returning to My Normally Scheduled Duties

Jeff — Wed, 23 May 2012 06:52:39 +0000

The other PM on my team is finally back from his vacation, so I can go back to only owning my area. That is until a couple weeks from now when my manager goes on vacation for three weeks and I’ll once again have to play this dance. That’s going to lead to some interesting management situations, but hey, I’ve played PM director before and didn’t screw everything up; I feel like I can play it again.

I went ahead and packed my suitcase for Dallas tonight just so that I could be sure all the stuff I’m taking (and leaving) there could be arranged properly. If I wasn’t having to connect through Chicago I likely wouldn’t be taking a suitcase at all, but walking around with a box containing a computer in more than just my original departure airport seems a little excessive. Chicago will also get a chance to redeem itself as far as a travel hub goes, but I’m not going to be that optimistic until at least lunch time on Friday.

Tricky, Tricky Game

Jeff — Tue, 22 May 2012 06:35:59 +0000

Turns out that short chapter wasn’t exactly as short as it led people to believe. Oh, it went though all the motions of being over: the end chapter screen, the little summary blurb, and even offering to save the game. Completely legitimate, right? Well, an hour or so later and going through all those motions again for the real time, sure. The good news I guess is that I’m at least officially now more than half done?

My main sources of entertainment tomorrow and Wednesday at work got cancelled, so since I have no reason to go in extremely early now, I may as well stay up for another hour or so and watch the SpaceX launch attempt #2. Ok, so maybe I’ll be playing games up until the launch gets interesting, but that’s not a crime. Time efficiency, people.

Everything Is Still Getting Played

Jeff — Mon, 21 May 2012 06:55:42 +0000

Of my two currently in progress games, one is very easy to play in Dallas. Well, the other really isn’t that much more difficult, but it does require slightly more work on my part. Therefore, I figure I should save the easy game for down there and play the slightly less easy game up here. Yay for thinking ahead and being productive!

So, while I clearly played some Paper Mario today, I actually made a lot more progress than I was anticipating. The chapter I had to finish off from when my Wii broke stayed on track with the 2.5 hour length, but then the next one I played was by far shorter. If the rest of the game stays like that then I have no doubt I can finish it by the end of the week. Since I don’t anticipate that happening though, it’s likely going to be a race once I get back to Seattle after Memorial Day to see if I can wrap it up before the end of the month.

Rapture Needs a Difficulty Adjustment

Jeff — Sun, 20 May 2012 00:26:25 +0000

For the amount of time I put into Bioshock 2 today, the amount of progress I have to show for it is comparatively small. Hopefully since I decided that I enjoy winning more than dying and lowered the difficulty as a result, future play sessions won’t be as trying. There really needs to be an Easy.5 setting as I don’t want the game to be too easy-mode, but Medium just keeps the game from being fun.

Once I got fed up with that I decided to pick Pokemon FireRed back up and continue on with it from where I stopped last year after investing 25+ hours. While history would dictate that I restart after taking this long of a break, the sheer amount of time and also not really needing the background of a story helped with my decision to just continue on. I’m currently either as far as I’ve ever gotten or extremely close to it, and maybe I’ll be able to take the opportunity of my flights next weekend to finally beat a Pokemon game. That sounds like it would be an accomplishment, but then you realize that there are actually four more generations of games afterwards with yet another round coming out this fall.

The Missed Calling of Another Company

Jeff — Sat, 19 May 2012 05:35:08 +0000

If three and a half years ago I’d interviewed with Facebook, I could be a very, very happy person right now. As it turns out I’m still fairly happy but just not nearly as wealthy as my alternate past me. Then again, they would have had to come to me since the path I was on would actually just have me finishing up school now instead.

Now that I’ve been exposed to the development process of Windows though, I feel like it would be extremely odd to have to be like the rest of the world and wait until batch of information is released to know what is coming in the next version. I can guarantee that I wouldn’t be running Windows 8 as my main OS right now, not with some of the bugs I’ve had to deal with at home. I wonder if I’d even like the direction that it’s going in without the internal knowledge of the design decisions?

No More Excuses Left

Jeff — Fri, 18 May 2012 06:39:08 +0000

I went on a Glee marathon this evening, and I’m caught up to the present just in time for the season finale next week. Between now and then, there’s nothing to keep me from Bioshock 2 (at least not that I can justify keeping me from it). Well, I can justify the party on Saturday as keeping me from it, but you’re fully aware that’s not what I meant.

Should I wish to start playing Diablo 3 while in Dallas I’ve gone ahead and added the key to my Battle.net account, but the server track record hasn’t exactly been stellar since launch. I don’t see a holiday weekend happening within two weeks really making things all that much better. Once my June YotGotYGP game has wrapped, I’ll probably either start playing it instead of my second monthly game or at least do it in parallel with one. Hey, after 12 years, is another month really going to matter all that much?

Still Siding With TV

Jeff — Thu, 17 May 2012 06:24:39 +0000

Neither Bioshock 2 nor Paper Mario can drag me away from catching up on TV episodes, but given that the last season finale is next week, I’d like to be all caught up by then. Fortunately, there should be no problem doing that, and then I promise I’ll go back to game playing. Hmmm, I guess this is how my backlog reached the size that it had; if I have a single dedicated focus then I can apparently force myself to play games, but once other things start to get in the way, all bets are off.

I realized recently that once again I’m back to a string of not having a completely free/open weekend for a while. Alternating between parties and traveling between now and my return from LA, it looks like most of my free time is going to come on weeknights. Mondays or Tuesdays will be taken up by Ultimate games, and while I don’t have anything else standing on my calendar, there’s usually something that pops up at least on one other night any given week. My social life in high school and college may have been drastically skewed because of sports, but I think I’m doing a fine job of catching up with the rest of the world.

The Yearly Stat Post is Here

Jeff — Wed, 16 May 2012 05:15:36 +0000

Are you ready for your yearly dose of blog stats?

Tying my record for most posts in a year, 366 of them: “Everybody Loves the Stats” to “Super Impressive All Things Considered”. Say it with me, 2259 total posts life to date (and 2260 if you count today’s). If you’re looking for a quarter of 10K, you’ll be anticipating January 10th coming around.
Posting streak wise, let’s up it to 1851, shall we? That’s one every day since 4/22/07, and #2000 for it is coming up on October 10th.
My longest title this year was only 11 words long, but I still had two titles as short as 2 words. For the third straight year my most common count was 5, and this time by a longshot (129, 35.2%). Runners up were 4 (89, 24.3%) and 6 (77, 21.0%).
Who remembers my blog year resolution from last year? It’s fine if you don’t; it was to make fewer last five minute posts, and guess what? I actually succeeded! This time around only 24% of them (88) fell in that five minute window, my fewest ever of tracking this stat. To get this year started off right, I hope you notice what time this one is being posted at.
Another new category got added, but it wasn’t anything nearly as interesting as Videos (although there were 16 posts in that category, so it clearly wasn’t a one year wonder). This year my Trips category expanded with Boston due to the real time posting from PAX East, and that combined with my other trips added up to 58 posts away from Seattle (Dallas: 49, Boston: 5, Los Angeles: 4). That’s an extra two weeks in Dallas over last year (and a month and a half total, so I guess I can’t complain about how little I get to travel). My comic count took a beating at the expense of the increased Videos posting though with only 7.

Since my resolution last year was so successful, I feel like I need to make another. Hmmm…I think the blog is due for a visual refresh, but is that really what I want to commit to? WordPress has been amazing for me, so I don’t really want to move away from it. Let’s just say that I’ll do something impressive with the site beyond a visual refresh. Don’t worry, I won’t try to get back into vlogging, but something needs a shakeup.