Roadtripping the Caravan

For the President's Day weekend, my wife and I decided it was time to take the new Grand Caravan out for a test of its road-trip qualifications. To that end, after leaving The Boy to spend a few days of quality time with his grandma, the remaining three of us set out for the three hundred-some mile jaunt from Seattle to Canyonville, OR to visit some college friends.

Despite my general ambivalence towards all things minivan, I have to admit that the GC is a fantastic road-trip vehicle. Comfortable, never short for music thanks to the Satellite radio and MyGig systems, plenty of room for our stuff, and it actually surprised me with the gas mileage. While the around town MPGs are generally horrible, averaging about 65mph on the freeway gave us real fuel economy numbers around 25 miles per gallon. Considering the EPA estimate is 23, I'd call that pretty darn good.

Hanging out with our friends and seeing their five-month-old little girl for the first time was great, but far too soon it was time to head back. Unfortunately, we brought something unexpected back with us: another evil version of The Flu. Urgh. The Lovely and Gracious Wife was the first to succumb, feeling the symptoms on Wednesday night, and in full-blown illness by Thursday. This also left me staying home playing Mr. Mom, a role I didn't exactly manage with my usual aplomb. By Saturday night, The Boy had succumbed, and let me tell you, I'd be hard-pressed to think of anything more pathetic than my tow-headed two-year old laying on the couch whimpering because he's got a fever and his body hurts.

Oh, and then on Sunday, I started showing symptoms, leaving The Girl as the only healthy one of us all. Well, at least work hasn't been too stressful today. Much like being in the eye of a hurricane, I don't imagine that this calm spell will last much longer, but it's nice for the moment, and well timed at that.

Things are going to change... Part 00

When I said I was going to get more material to blog about this year, I really didn't intend to switch to a three posts per month mode. That's just how January ended up. On the bright side, while I've been busy elsewhere, things have begun to change.

There's a chorus to a song that gets sung a lot as special music at my alma mater. And while I can't seem to find the audio anywhere on the internet (What? Nobody wants to pirate PCC Ensemble CDs? Whouda thunk it???) here's the start of the chorus that's been periodically pogoing though my head for a while

"Things are gonna change someday.
Trouble's gonna fly away.
Things are gonna change for the better
and I know that the better's gonna stay."

It's going to be a big year. And the first major step happened on the last weekend in January, when my wife drove off the lot of our local Chrysler/Dodge/Jeep dealer in the vehicle pictured below (I was following her in our VUE, recently returned from the repair shop with a brand new muffler and back hatch)


My Lovely and Gracious wife now has a minivan of her very own, and for the first time in our nearly six years of marriage, we're officially owners of two cars.

Now for those who know us, no, we didn't suddenly find out that we need more space for car seats than the back row of the VUE provides. However, where we do need more space is in our living arrangements, where the two bedroom condo that was roomy for two adults and two cats has become rather cramped when two toddlers are added to the mix. Since we're highly unlikely to find a larger home within our budget that still allows me to walk to work, and since I really like my job, procurement of a second vehicle became a necessity.

The Lovely and Gracious wife really, really enjoys her new ride too. She's spent pretty much every drive thus far burning our entire CD collection into the MyGig system, and her sole complaint is that it's too easy to go too fast. And while I would have probably preferred something more expensive that exuded masculinity (hey, you can probably fit three carseats in the back of an F350, right), even I have to admit that behind the wheel, when you turn on the heated seat, adjust the height, and let the 251hp 4.0 liter V6 take you from 0 to 60 in about 8 seconds, the fact that you're driving a minivan doesn't seem to matter nearly as much.

I guess it's appropriate though, that the herald of all the upcoming changes this year is a car. After all, cars get you from place to place, and in this case, start the first domino in a long chain.

See you space cowboy.

Final Approach to a shipped game

It's almost noon here on a typically rainy Seattle Saturday. The blinds and sunshades that keep the summer afternoon sun off my bank of monitors are all open, and I can see the ripples of raindrops hitting the puddles on our building's North-West deck.

I'm in the office again.

Since coming back from Christmas break, I've had one day off. This looks to be another such week, and I'll likely be in on Monday even though we're officially closed in observance of MLK day.

I started the day with sixty-one bugs on my plate. Yesterday I started with fifty-two, fixed or moved about eight of them, and left with sixty assigned to me. We're a week and a half from sending our game to be certified by Microsoft and Sony, and I'll probably see everyone else left on the team at some point this weekend. We're not work-a-holics. Well, not most of us anyway. I'm sure there are some who are, but the vast majority of us would rather be spending the long weekend with friends and family, rather than hunkered down at our desks squishing bugs.

But that's the price you pay for turning your hobbies into a career. Life on the bug lines continues...

Playing Now Update

I finally finished Kingdom Hearts last night. It took close to a month, and forty-five hours or so of playtime (Thank you Square, for those wonderfully depressing "Hours Played" counters), but at least now I understand why this game is beloved by so many people. Mix Disney characters with Final Fantasy characters, add world-spanning plot to allow the fusion to make sense, set blender to Frappe, and viola. And I'm only five years behind the times on this one too. :)

At this point, though, it's on to something newer. One of my Christmas presents this year from my Lovely and Gracious wife was Assassin's Creed for my PS3, so now that I've wrapped up the epic RPG, it's time for something a little more action oriented, and shorter. I just don't have the time for epic adventures that I used to. Of course, I'll also be working in the new Sam & Max episode sometime soon...

And believe me, I am still alive

I'm doing game development and I'm still alive...

With apologies to Jonathan Coulton and GlaDoS. Seriously though, I'm still here, just working my slowly expanding fanny off as we push to get Big Game Sequel out the door by the end of the month. Not that I'm working any less than I did when I was on the QA side of this equation, but it's a whole different ballgame when you're responsible for fixing bugs rather than writing them.

Happy New Year!

Here are three New Year's resolutions for me and this blog:

1. Blog more. Resolution #2 ought to help with that.

2. Get better material. Hopefully in 2008 I'll take up something that will furnish me with more material for the direction I want this aviation/video games/media blog to go in.

3. Stop stealing music by listening to my iPod. At least, that's what the RIAA thinks I do.

Oh, and in honor of #3, here's Weird Al's video for "Don't Download this Song".

A Christmas Salute

The wacky hijinks will be back soon, I promise. I've got the next two weeks off, and regular blogging ought to improve. For today, though, I'd just like to give a salute to my brother-in-law, Seth.

Now Seth and I haven't seen eye to eye on a lot of things. I married his big sister, moved her out of Iowa, there've been some ongoing family issues, etc. Let's just say we never quite got off on the right foot and leave it at that.

But, while I'm muttering about the Seattle rain as I make my mile and a quarter walk from my condo to my climate controlled office, where I'll stress about about my part in getting a video game into the hands of the clamoring masses, Seth is "enjoying" the hospitalities of a barracks, scanning for IEDs along the roadway, and spending Christmas thousands of miles from his girlfriend and his family.

So while we don't agree on everything, I'd just like to say thanks to my brother-in-law. It's men and women just like him, from all over the country, who are spending Christmas far from home in warm, sandy places, so that the rest of us can enjoy warm homes filled with our loved ones.


Hooah Private, come home safe.