Last year Sukie referred Guildy and Shinobi to an event in Moab, Utah, called Raft for the Cure, a rafting and eating expedition where half of the proceeds benefit Susan G. Komen for the Cure Salt Lake City.

Well, they went, and had ridiculous amounts of fun. Which made us ridiculously sad that we were not able to go But we all have times in our lives where other things need the funds, and so the funds go to other things.

This year, we went, we saw, and we had a blast.

By blast, I mean, I would definitely go again! The rapids were not as rapid as the ones I went through on the Snake river up north in Idaho, but I was excited to go down the Colorado, spend some outside time with friends, and remember how much the sun hates me.

Wear sunscreen. Also, remember that sunscreen is going to be washed off when you jump in to the friggin river. I just couldn’t resist.

However, maybe I should have waited until after I’d lost 40 pounds. Except that probably wouldn’t have happened while on the boat, so I went for it anyway. The details of getting back in the boat for a 230 pound man are a subject of extreme hilarity. Like 2 people pulling and 1 person pushing. I very much blame my poor fitting life-jacket, which, though i could adequately tighten it around my large belly, also expected me to have rather large man-boobs to go with it, which sadly, I am not there … yet.

So I get on the boat and I’m just tired because it took a lot of effort to get in, and so Shinobi goes to pull his wife in and of course he must have just ratched up all the Ninja strength he has because she is lifted out of the water so easily that they both just topple over and there’s now three people floppin around in an unsteady boat and it’s just comical.

So I’m totally motivated to lose the poundage now, with a new target of 185-195 pounds. I don’t like to be tied to a number, but it’s gotta be lower than what I am now. Sheesh. So we got pulled pork sandwiches for dinner (though I could have eaten a lot more of those tasty burgers we had for lunch) and listened to three musical acts. The first was a girl whose music sounded a lot like Alanis Morisette or Jewel but wasn’t quite there and involved a lot of girlish self-doubt lyrics and being upset and you get the picture. Chicks, man. The next two acts were incrementally better, High Water and then a bluegrass band who absolutely rocked, but we just couldn’t stay for the 10 minute video at the end because we were wiped out. I slept the whole night in the tent on the mattress, I woke up a couple of times (twice, I looked over and the boy was sitting straight up. The second time I noticed that he was off the mattress and clearly not awake enough to realize that the reason he was sitting up was to get back on the mattress.)

So on the day we were leaving (yes, this blog is very non-linear) Sukie tells me that Guildy doesn’t want to go back to Moab next weekend (for the 4th!) because it will be raining. As I’ve recently been through a rainy camping trip I can tell you, this is brutal, and I was getting sold on the idea. So with me and Guildy in the ‘not going to Moab on the 4th of July’ group I was pretty sure we wouldn’t be going. However, half an hour before Sukie and I arrived in Moab (Guildy, Shinobi, and Guildy’s coworkers J and R arrived two hours before us), Guildy and Sukie talked and Guildy said ‘now that I’m here we’re totally coming back next weekend’ (that was to me from Sukie so it may not be 100% correct.) So now I was on the outs, but I’m good with that. One man against one woman is already an uphill battle, but you can’t win against two of thems.

Favorite moment:
“Ally’s boat is ready”
me to Shinbi: “but what about Ally’s sister’s boat”
“come back Ally’s boat! come back Ally’s Sister’s boat!”
*high fives*

eh, it was funny when we were standing around on a dock, waiting to leave. Our guide, Leland, had us ready to rock and roll well before any of the other boats but because of the order the boats were tied up we had to wait a long time while other people got to go. Lameness!

At Deseret Industries a few weeks ago I found an NES control deck and two of the classic NES controllers featured on my wallet for about 14 bucks total (NES:$8 Controller:$3/ea) so of course I snapped it up even though it had the wrong wall wart (13AC instead of 9AC) and God only knows the condition inside.

A few days later I bought the repair parts at nintendorepairshop.com – the part that was the magic bullet was the 72 pin connector at the back of the NES where the cartridge meets the road (so to speak). We’d tried the NES before at Frik’s house and it was flashy red lights. Red lights might mean bad to you but it means a lot of the system actually is working. I am not good with component repair (i.e., would be at a loss if I had to break out a soldering iron, though I can spot a popped capacitor, thanks to Dell for a bad string of PCs) so it was a boon to this process to know that the brains of the operation was fine, but that it was failing to read the cartridges.

When I got my fixin’ parts I busted open the NES to find that it is in deed a very very clean system. I blew it out with a can of air anyway, though. It may have only been in service for a while, and put away to rot in a far away bin, safe from dust bunnies. Or, probably just as likely, someone else has attempted repair of this NES before.

So I dropped in the new parts, put it all back together and fired up The Legend of Zelda. A few points of note, after playing a few games. Most emulators are just garbage – my favorite one actually runs too fast. My fancy Logitech controller does shit for D-Pad controls, when compared to my NES controllers (which I have yet to open up and clean out.) What is neatest about owning the actual cartridges is now I have the right to own ROM versions of those games!

Did you know the NES has it’s own protection against pirated games and whatnot? It needs to communicate to a chip in the cartridge or else you get blinky reds (the system fails to read it and resets itself.) I would bet that’s the deal with our copy of ‘Yo Noid’, because once when booting it I actually got a little music and saw a title.

Anyway, at my surprising party I got several NES games and I got the games my brother couldn’t sell (because they were non-working at the store) when he sold the NES. All of them work ‘cept for old Noid. I’m getting a bit to open up the cartridges and really clean them up soon.

Of course, now Sukie has discovered the Virtual Console on our Wii, so my NES collecting days are numbered. I will have to build a suitable display for my cartridges

You guys got me good.

I suspected a surprise party on Wednesday. However, several friends conspired to squash that idea from my head. Instead, we decided to go to the movies as a family.

There were so many things that stand out now, knowing how it all turned up. As we went to the movies, Sukie said she had invited some friends of ours, but that they couldn’t make it. This should have been a dead giveaway but I was so lost in my own world that I did not process it until after the fact. If she had in deed been dead set on not hanging out with anyone, why would she invite friends?

The night before we baby-sat for some other friends of ours – and then hung out, playing Ticket to Ride afterwards – I should have seen it coming.

Most telling, I should have listened to my gut, telling me something was up, early on.

So, after ‘Up’ when I got home and smelled smoke in the house (but not outside, necessarily) I was freaking out a little bit, thinking there was an electrical fire. I went and checked the fish tank immediately, but it was not there. Then I went around to the top of the stairs and Sukie said the dog had gotten out, which was puzzling since we have a solid door and walls holding the dog in. She’s old but resourceful, so I ran down. I was going to stop short in the door to the family room and had my hand up in a pointing gesture to say something about how it didn’t smell like the dog did something bad, but instead the lights went up and I saw more people than have ever been in my basement.

Oh, I am loved.

Well, that, and people love a good surprise. So I was dumbfounded, barely processing anything that was said, I know Guildy was talking to me and Shinobi was there and beyond that it is all just a big blur of people. Lucas walked by and said something, and I was just like … whoa. People filed out of the basement all saying something to me, probably mostly ‘Happy Birthdays’ but even today, days later, I am in total shock.

The party was awesome, with Bouncy Castles and presents and rad cakes and I don’t recall the last time I’ve had such a good day.

More on the Nintendo and yesterday’s activities later.

>backgammon free casino money free craps game play free black jack craps video poker strategy play black jack online how to win video poker casino game online uk best casino online casino secure online gambling jackpot casino online casino black jack learn to play craps how to win at video poker craps online blackjack casino game online casino betting free on line video poker casino games no download casino online gambling casino play free casino slots video poker machine bonus video poker free on line slots double bonus video poker free video poker games free casinos roulette online craps rules free on line casino rules of craps online casino free money blackjack 21 internet casino how to play craps free casino game download fortunelounge online casino free casino download free casino card game free roulette game free casino play no deposit free money casino internet casino online Saturday’s Ticket-Europe score. Same basic win as last time, lots of routes, one station, none of the 6 or 8 routes, just good old railin through Europe. One thing I’m particularly proud of is I clashed with another player and burnt up turns just making them ‘go around’ my routes.

Because you’re only allowed to do one thing on each turn in Ticket to Ride, I call this an ‘Economy of Turns’, each turn needs to be spent doing something that puts you on a direct path to making a route and winning the game. That seems simple, but before I realized this, my games consisted of a lot of card drawing and waiting – we all did it. The first time I consciously made an effort to spend the fewest turns to win, I destroyed my opponents by at least 60 points each. That was the only time the strategy worked that well – from then on it has been a driving force behind each game, and they all are done in about 45 minutes. By spending fewer turns building up cards and building routes, thereby using my trains faster (which are the truly limited resource of the game – 45 in Europe, 40 in Switzerland) the game reaches it’s conclusion faster. If you are lucky enough to outpace your opponents, they may have incomplete routes, and curse your name at night.

So, that was a blast. The other thing that was a blast is that when y’all went and left town to go to wedding receptions, my readership dropped sharply! But I’m glad you’re all back and I’ll try to get back to regular posting.

This morning I’m going to a neighborhood garage sale. I’m looking forward to it, because I almost always find something awesome. I would like to get some kind of stereo or home theater receiver that takes RCA input, but for cheap. I’ve got a few good speakers (well, cheap, at least) that I’d like to rig up to a MAME box.

Speaking of, the boy and I went to an arcade yesterday just to look at the games, and … is it me, or are there no great games at arcades anymore? The technology in them looks just barely above N64 level. Well, I guess it’s just a money pit anyway, but I fondly remember the days I’d walk to the Seven Eleven with my friend Miguel to play Street Fighter 2 and watch others play it. The arcade was much better than it was on SNES (which we didn’t have at my house until after we had an N64 – which is the source of some of my fondest memories of my teenage years, but that is a post for another day.) I was never particularly good at fighting games anyway, but it was always fun to test one’s mettle against some random stranger.

I’ve been a hobbyist programmer for nearly 7 years now, I started in late 2002.

Over the years I have worked on dozens of projects, most of them unreleased ‘tech demos’ as they might be called. Actuallly fleshing a project out and making it user friendly isn’t as much fun as messing around for yourself. Back in the early days (5+ years ago) I would share my work with my online friends, and a few online forums. I learned, the hard way, 2 critical things about the Universe through this process.

1. The Internet is full of morons, who find it rather easy to criticize, but who probably couldn’t do the same thing you are doing. If you can’t contribute a worthwhile criticism, you should shut the hell up.
2. The less time spent worrying about what others think gives you more time to worry about what you think. If it’s your project, it’s your project. If it’s your baby, raise it as your own. You’d be surprised how much the finished project (or, in my case, unfinished project) reflects your personality if you let it.

More importantly, I have learned that software development, when it is done for one’s own personal gratification, can be a deeply rewarding and cathartic experience, and I daresay that it has been a spiritual journey.

So why am I getting all philosophical about this?

Because, after a long hiatus from revision control, I have finally set up a small SVN and I vow to put my projects in the repository. In my main project, the ray tracer that I am fond of, I am cleaning the code up since I have already done an initial commit. Oh boy, it’s uggggggly. Lots of silly #if 0 comments and /* blah */ littered throughout, functions that don’t get called … YUCK. So it’s getting scrubbed down. Since I work on it so sporadically, so much testing and partial functionality – it makes me remember when I was working on things, it’s been like going through an old photo album. I remember what I was in to at the time, what music I was listening to, what games I was excited about playing (and ignoring, hence the programming), sometimes I get a faint recollection of what time of day or season. It’s been weird.

So, I have all this source code laying around. Nuts! Time to clean it up and figure out what to do with all of it. Some of it may end up being BSD’d, some has to be GPL’d because it uses snippets from other GPL’d projects, things like that.

I’m pretty proud of my 7 years of hobbyist development. I am proud that I haven’t taken a computer programming course, that me, the Internet, and some good old fashioned cleverness have gotten me by, even when the task at hand has been too big, I’ve always found a way to compile the uncompilable library (or find a replacement) or stumble across the answer, or even just ask someone who actually knows how to program which way I should go.

Last Thursday, Sukie and I went to the Johnson Mill up in Midway, Utah.

Around 6pm they called Sukie (we went after work on Thursday night) to see if we were going to be there to check in. You betcha! I thought it was weird since … who the hell cares when you check in. Well, they left us our key to get in and we checked in late, and …

So we woke up the next morning and I saw why they’d want us to have checked in before sundown – it is one nice lookin place! Breakfast was stuffed french toast with the other couples who were, as could be expected, not very talkative. I wore my Smokey the Bear shirt, prepared to say, “I FIGHT FOREST FIRES!” if anyone asked me about it, but unlike our previous Provo BnB experience, not much of a crowd. I guess, like me, people are just hardwired to love weekends, even when we have Friday off.

So, yeah, 10 years of being married to the Sukes. There’s a lot I can say about that, and with all the weddings in recent months and the pending 10 year WudaniSukieVersary I’ve had a lot of time to think about just what it all means. And I do mean to infer that I wax introspective.

In my head I keep trying to finish this sentence, “Marriage is …” but like all great universal truths it carries such weight that you can’t do it justice with words, or understand the truly complicated maze of it (or how beautifully simple it is.) So I guess the lesson here is, I love my Sukie more than the words can say. Oh ho ho, Cliche!

Won a very silly late night game of Ticket to Ride (one-hundred and fourty-two points, two stations, 6 routes – none of the 6 or 8 routes) followed by about an hour and a half of WordPress tweaking this morning. Now my blogroll works like Bloggers does, and tells me who’s updated recently. Snazzy, right?

It was good to hang out, eat a delicious burger, and play some Dalmuti. I was Jabuti for 3 or 4 rounds but it was not meant to last

Well, maybe not that big, but certainly, a post.

Guildilocks and Shinobi (er …xkordave) got married today in the Manti Temple. It was a sunny and windy day, and my first sunburn of the year. Sukie was injured in the process, but not literally in the process, since (for those of you who don’t follow along) Sukie and I are non-Mormons and certainly not temple-goers, by natural extension. But she did miss a step and fell down. It was (is) pretty bad. I think the road to recovery will be rough.

Anyway back to the happy couple. I remember bugging Shinobi about when he’d finally ask her to marry him, and even when he did the engagement was a very long one (well, for Mormon standards, anyway.) That I can think of I don’t recall one longer than two months, but that is unlikely to be the record, but 7 to 8 months certainly is a long time.

Anyway, so today they got married. There’s a lot to be said on the subject, since they are close friends (each) but I’m afraid there comes a point where I just don’t feel I am capable of the words so I just stop, clam up and get a strange look on my face.

Hopefully it will suffice to say that I feel very good about this union, and very good about the fruits it will produce.

I digress, I wish them all the luck and happiness that life certainly has in store for them.

I’ve been listening to a lot of Final Fantasy tracks lately. It makes me really want to play those games. I’m currently going to try to accomplish more things in Kingdom Hearts II so I can unlock the secret ending (which is badass if you haven’t seen it on YouTube.)

I liked video games a lot as a kid, but Final Fantasy III (VI in Japan, as we call ‘em now) made me love the video games. From the first scene where Terra is marching in her Magitek suit to the cave city, Narshe, to the encounter with the frozen Esper – all the way through to the end, it’s probably the best game ever made.

I’m totally serious about that.

March ‘09 rocked our world and I heartily look forward to April. Guildy will clearly remember early in March I enlightened her about the true nature of March. Winter may be over (well maybe not, judging by the recent coldness) but in the spring thaw all minds turn to the actual year ahead and start to turn things over. In the spring thaw, we ask ourselves, what will we make of this year – what will it make of us? We ponder what we will do differently.

I myself have several plans for the year ahead.

Also, I think I will have to renege on the pact. I think it was an infantile response to an infantile fight. I’d call it an argument, or disagreement, but those words are too nice for what went down.

Last Sunday we had a rather pleasant evening, though I have to say I think I was rather abrasive and the neighbors downstairs must have appreciated my habit of stomping my foot on the floor when I’m having a good time. Thanks to Guildy for hosting the evening, which was a very excellent Fakesgiving.

Striker and I beat Resident Evil 5 last weekend as well, which, I have to say, is one of the funnest games I’ve played in recent memory. I think the old style of Resident Evil games is dead, but this new style definitely addresses the new arcs that the storyline has to take. It’s the kind of dangerous world that the first 3 games eluded to, and while the fourth game definitely seemed like it was way out there, Resident Evil 5 brings it back in line, and ties it securely in place with the rest of the series.