Posts Tagged ‘Personal’

Novel a week (well almost)

Jan 20th, 10 / 0 Comments

books So at the end of 2009 I scoured through my Goodreads and Shelfari profiles to determine to number of books that I read last year. And to my surprise I didn’t even break through to the 30’s. This really surprised me at first but then the more I thought about it I realized that I had indeed gone weeks without touching a book and even more weeks reading the same damn thing.

It turns out that having a pregnant wife can really zap your time and energy when it comes to allotting the needed time for reading, well that and Wire in the Blood on Netflix. So this year around, I am challenging myself to read a novel a week for the rest of the year minus two proscribed 2 week breaks. Since it is already the  third week of the year and accounting for the 4 weeks off, that leaves me with 45 novels until victory.

Lending even more difficulty to this is the realization that I will have a newborn in the house here with me at any time now. Hopefully the odd feeding hours and early risings will give me the right amount of time to finish what I plan.

To be honest 45 novels in a year is not an unheard of proposition, but I am almost certain I can’t do it.  But on the other hand, it would be nice to read that much again in a year.

So for fuck’s sake if you see me watching too much Robson Green or Top Gear on the tellie please kick me in the ass and through me a Warhammer novel so I can get back on track.

Books, Personal

Personal Time

Jul 20th, 09 / 0 Comments

I just wanted to let everyone know that I have not been around much lately for a couple of different reasons. Mainly due to a health issue that demanded to take center stage, but also due to my wife’s continuing pregnancy. I apologize for not posting more often, to all 14 of you subscribers out there and hope to get back into the full swing of things again soon.

As a side note I added a News Page to the site that is tied to my Google Reader account. So when I find a cool article it will show up there. As I can go through hundreds of articles a day at least something is bound to show up in there worth mentioning. I am not entirely happy with the formatting yet and it may go through some more versions before I find a scheme that I like, so beware.

Personal, Site News

I fell off into a hole called Fable 2

Feb 9th, 09 / 0 Comments

Sorry for not posting anything of substance here lately I have had some worries with work, some family things, and a little game called Fable 2 that has been eating at me for the last week or so.

Fable 2 is not like the first Fable game. Fable 2 blows that first game into smithereens with a concentrated force of Will, then shoots at its dead carcass with a 5 star crossbow with a few augments on it. If that made any sense, I’m not talking to you because you already know what I am telling everyone else out there. FABLE 2 kicks major ass! This is the RPG I had been wanting for the XBOX 360 from day one. A game you can get utterly lost in, where your moral compass can do cart wheels. I’m not going to go into details here  suffice to say that I have finished the game, and wish I didn’t. There were numerable side quests still to be taken up, and I plan on starting over, this time as a girl and good, instead of the scourge deamon bastard child from hell I just was, everyone nees a bit of levity don’t you think?

Personal, RPGs

I passed the TX CHL Course

Jan 20th, 09 / 1 Comment

dpsealSo Saturday I went out and took the Texas Concealed Handgun License (CHL) course at Evans Brothers Guns and Range in Huntington. If you like shooting and have thought about taking the class, do so. It is a very easy course in which people rarely fail. Casey, the part owner and instructor at Evans Brothers, makes the class as interesting as it possibly can be.

The state mandates that a CHL course must be a minimum of 10 hours long. This is a little too long for the material that needs to be covered but the overall experience is good. You must score at least a 70% on the exam (all multiple choice and true/false) and then a 175 on the shooting.

The target shooting is done with a large man-size target staged at 3, 7, & 15 yards. It is possible to score the necessary amount on the 3 yard target to pass. If you aren’t certain at how far three yards is, trust me it is very close.

I scored a 249 out of 250 points on the shooting and would have made perfect if I would have slowed down and not have been in a hurry, but oh well. Both exams are simply Pass/Fail so it really doesn’t matter.

As I wanted to have the ability to carry a semi-automatic pistol instead of just a revolver, I rented a gun from Casey at the range, something that most places will let you do. I happened to get lucky and was given a great Sig-Sauer P6 (known as a P225 here in the US) 9mm. The gun really agreed with me and I think it convinced me to carry it or a similar gun instead of the small J-Frame S&W I would have carried.

The application packet wil be mailed out tomorrow and I will keep everyone up to date on the status of it as such. I also plan on purchasing a new pistol ASAP and will let you know how that works out as well.

Right now I think I am torn between the Sig-Sauer P6, the Sig-Sauer P239, and the Walther PPS.

2251

Sig P6

2391

Sig P239

walther_pps_11

Walther PPS

Personal

Wacom Bamboo Tablet

Jan 11th, 09 / 2 Comments

Product Photography

So after years of being out of the graphics game I finally decided to dabble here and there with Photoshop CS3. So I went out and purchased this sweet little guy, the Wacom Bamboo small tablet. I have to say thanks to Terry for giving me the heads up on it.

The new series of Bamboo tablets are geared more toward to non-professionals but still hasome of the same specs as the older Intuos2 tablets. The tablet does a good job of recognizing the pen from a decent height, specs say about 3mm, allowing you to use it like a traditional pointer device if you want to.

The Bamboo that I got is the small version with a tablet area of 5.8″x3.6″, and since the tablet represents the entire screen, making large strokes can be awkward. On the flip side the 3mm gap also makes very small selections a little bit tricky as well. But most of these issues you become accustomed to after normal usage.

The tablet itself has four function buttons and a touch ring that adds additional functionality to the tablet, although the ring is similar to those found on touchpads in laptops. I could see the pen being used as a primary pointing device for people with mobility issues, but personally the Bamboo is just too small for me to use daily.

All in all, it is a great deal for those who are wanting a tablet to doodle or to do some personal graphics work. And at $99 it is something of a steal to the Wacoms of old. A definite buy for the amateur.

Art, Personal, Tech

I hit 30!

Dec 1st, 08 / 4 Comments

Yesterday was my 30th birthday and my wife surprised me with a Sony PRS-505 E-Reader! This is just an amazingly awesome piece of hardware with a screen that just has to be seen to really be appreciated. This has already allowed me to merge my two great fetishes in life, tech and reading.

This thing is really well done, button presses are firm and the housing is of a very durable plastic. The dimensions 6.9" x 4.8" x 0.3" make it perfect for prolonged use and the weight of the reader, 9oz., gives you the feeling that this is not a flimsy piece of junk.

The e-ink display only uses power when a page is redrawn so the battery life is quite impressive at 7,500 page turns. It uses no power whatsoever to keep an image on the screen. Speaking of the screen, this puppy is absolutely gorgeous. The clarity and crispness of the text can only be compared to that of a freshly printed high quality laser printer. And the viewing angle is somewhere close to 180 degrees! Unlike other screens this thing looks the best in direct sunlight, really I swear!

I lost a whole lot of books in the storm surge from Hurricane Ike and this is the perfect replacement for them! My only reservation is not getting one sooner!

Personal

Got in my humidor today also!

Nov 20th, 08 / 0 Comments

Sweeet little baby it is! A 100 count Toscani humidor with Spanish cedar inside and a tray, brass hinges and inset handles…  HUM-TOSCANA-2

yeah it’s nice…  :)

Personal

Burned Out!

Nov 20th, 08 / 2 Comments

I am so fucking burned out with work right now that it is borderline treason. I’m the lone tech writer for a mid-level software company and I am just fighting it everyday. Unfortunately going independent doesn’t guarantee the amount of pay I need to provide for my family, and I learned the craft in-house. Also, my NDA pretty much excludes me from anything without a battle.

I’m sick of people giving me the specs for a doc and then changing it 90% through but not extending the damn deadline. Or having a doc due to a client to validate the format and style of the document, but then the day it is due tell you that is must be a final draft, they’ll be checking for content.

This is on top of the other duties that I already manage, two separate bug tracking databases, a number of delivered apps, and being the only person, at least at times it seems, that can translate programmer speech patterns into discernable text for a client to understand.

I was wiped out in Hurricane Ike, lost fucking everything (Hell I only owned one pair of pants until yesterday!), having to move to another region of the state, my wife losing her job, losing two of my cars, the lit goes on and on…

Meanwhile, the people in the office who were also affected, some slightly some as bad as me, seem to think I am not working or some such bullshit. Fuck me! Did I mention that I had insurance on everything, but not flood insurance! So nothing was covered, I lost upwards or $150,000 in stuff and got $7000 from FEMA. Now don’t get me wrong, I have nothing against FEMA! Without them I would have been homeless and no chance of survival afterwards. My beef was with the god damn insurance companies. Technically the damage should have been covered under my current policy. But the insurance company decided after the fact that a storm surge is a flood! I am in the same boat as a renter as a guy who lost his entire home and is not able to rebuild for whatever reason! I had 6 fucking feet of water in my house for two fucking days! If you have ever survived a flood you know what it’s like if not shut the fuck up and be happy it wasn’t you.

Long story short is that I am back to working paycheck to paycheck, slaving for the man with no real end in sight.

I decided to bitch now, just because I can’t fucking take it any longer. I am one of the forgotten, one of those poor bastards that couldn’t afford to stay in the strike zone after Ike and can barely afford to live elsewhere. No one has helped us out except for FEMA and some exceptionally nice people at the KofP in East Texas, and what little furniture that we have now is due to their kind donations.

So why write this now? I’m fairly certain no one reads this shit anyway so why not! Besides if I don’t at least throw it down somewhere I’m certain I’m going to go fucking insane.

I’m mindlessly ranting now, this shit isn’t even making sense anymore….

Personal

Hurricane Ike…

Sep 15th, 08 / 0 Comments

Well Friday night and Saturday morning Hurricane Ike plowed into the Texas coast. As a result we have lost everything save the few items we had with us when we evacuated. tens of thousands of dollars worth of books, thousands and thousands of dollars worth of computer and electronic equipment, and more importantly to me everything that belonged to my four year old daughter.

You can try and prepare yourself for the amount of destruction that has occurred but you really can’t imagine it until you see it. Hundreds of houses that had at least three feet of standing water and many like ours that had 5 feet standing and at least 7 feet at one point inside.

I am effectively homeless, but I have my health and most importantly, my wife and daughter. I am not sure if anyone comes here any more but if you do, don’t forget about us in Bridge City Texas. The media already has, and the destruction I saw in there today deserves some attention. It is absolutely heartbreaking.

I will see if I can get some photos online in the next few days.

Hope everyone is OK!

Personal

Gustav was a bust…

Sep 4th, 08 / 0 Comments

Well, Hurricane Gustav will go down in the history books as another false alarm for the state of Texas. All in all, the forced vacation to San Antonio cost me about $500. The only reason it was that cheap was because we shared a room with my in-laws.

But San Antonio was surprisingly fun! I have to go back at the end of the month for business, so I now know what to see.

There is supposed to be another Vampire game this weekend so I’ll let everyone know if my Set finally gets killed by that damn Brujah. ;-)

Personal