Snowman Studios
Microsoft can be such a pain in the ass sometimes....
I spent 4 hours installing my programming interface and such, and it doesn't seem to work as well as the old one....
Maybe it's because I've had a tunnel vision of my own for the olympics, but I'm starting to see a bias myself: Tae Kwon Do doesn't get the same coverage that sports like men's field hockey recieve. First off I was shocked to hear they did men's field hockey. But when the bronze metal game went to over time, the broad cast in the US was started 20 minutes early and Tae Kwon Do was passed over. Also, when I went to the NBC website, the big news was the American woman getting silver in the featherweight division and not the Korean winning gold.
I've tried hard to catch every bit of tv coverage of TKD, but it took going to the nbc website to find
this article about an injured competitor. It's too bad that he was doing so well before he got KOed. It does make it seem more sensible when you see the competitor in the lead avoiding combat to prevent such an occurance to them.
Also, there were some people who did not understand the scoring and penalties for Tae Kwon Do.
This link has all the information, including penalties I didn't even know about (they are givens: don't loose your temper or be stupid and you won't ever see one).
My plan was simple: tape the showing of Tae Kwon Do on MSNBC at 2 AM as listed on NBC's website, then wake up at 6 AM to watch further coverage.
The problems: 2 AM and 6 AM were in EST with no tape delay for PST. Also, the internal clock for the VCR had not been changed since the last day-light-savings change.
Two problems cancel out: 6 AM EST becomes 3 AM PST. The VCR clock was an hour slow, so 2 AM became 3 AM, and the 6 AM showing was successfully taped.
I managed to successfully watch and tape the afternoon finals for the women's and men's fly weight division.
Other than that, my day has been spent burning gig after gig off my hard drive, programming, and learning that the destruction of CDs (by bending) is best done over a trash can (hey, atleast I had enough sense to switch from pointing it towards my face).
For the
hick in some of us.
It's amusing when a governor touts the number of residents in the military, it's like proof that there is nothing in the state (including education) and that some people want out.
Ugh, I'm so sick of hearing stuff related to the
Swift Boat Veterans for
Bush.... Everyone who's been paying attention knows the story, or should have a grasp of it. Whether it really is under direct control of the Bush campaign or just funded by friends or whatever, can we get back to talking about the issues?
Gee, thanks
guys...
"Women were more likely to slam the phone when challenged, while men seemed angrier when politely turned down, they found."
In other news, not a whole lot is happening. I'm busy, but it's with the same old stuff.
Tonight was the first night in weeks that I ended up staying up this late. I didn't want to, but I couldn't fall asleep. Maybe it's because my week didn't make me all that tired, and I didn't use an alarm this morning and slept an extra hour or two... oh well. I'm keeping my alarm set for 9 AM so I'll be plenty ready for bed by the time tomorrow night comes around.
More on the test.
As a programmer gets further and further along with pressure, he tends to start getting more creative in his naming of variables. As I was writing code intended to branch down a tree, I created a variable that went from branch to branch called TreeMonkey. I had been using the variable iter as a counter for various things, and when I needed another I called it jter (short for jitter, something I was experiencing from caffein and sugar overload; I didn't drink soda for a week and there I was finishing off a 2 Liter in 24 hours).
Fun with
tribes who do not know...
I applied to a bunch of places today, including one place that wanted me to do a timed e-mail test. Oh boy was that a doozy. I got through the first four problems in an hour, but the last one took me 4 hours because I was looking at the problem the wrong way. Oh well.
Speaking of
chugging....
Hey, it's Yogi!
Chugging along.
Falling a lot in Aikido. Atleast I'm getting good at it, but the stress of it was starting to show a little today. I'm also getting much better at learning new moves from watching the instructor as well as recognizing moves from previous times and being able to pick up where I left of.
The first (but not horribly) significant set back has occured for Snowman Studios. It's not fully resolved, but I've got a pretty good idea how it's going to pan out.
Oh well, it's not like I'm horribly disappointed. So does anyone know who owns the copyright to
London is Burning or
Geurilla?
http://www.snowman-studios.com/ is up and running!!!!!!!!
(most have no idea why I am so excited. I don't either, but I think it's because it has taken over a week to get this far).
I think I have discovered the solution to the problem that I am working on.
One of the good things about DirectX is that it does a lot of the hard work for you. One of the bad things is that it is like a black box, where a lot of things happen behind the scenes and things don't make as much sense to the untrained (and this is the catagory into which I fall).
Anyway, after spending a large portion of today at my computer programming, I shall be enjoying my evening doing other things. Maybe I'll spend some time making my website say more than "This is a test of the Snowman Broadcasting System." (as of now it isn't working yet, but that it should be all set in a few hours).
As I get more and more familiar with programming for Direct3D, I get more and more impressed by it's design. On one hand, the documentation sucks (but is still better than most) and there is a steep initial learning curve. On the other hand, I am very impressed by it's nature after getting deep enough into it.
There are some things I'm still iffy about, but maybe I'll find the answer to them later.
Things are progressing for Snowman Studios. It looks like the website woes are resolving themselves (just waiting for the 48 hour period to pass). The first game itself is progressing nicely, and I should soon be to the point where I am programming what makes an army.
In related news, my current "employer" and I are looking into having me setup shop in the insurance office for snowman studios. It won't be much of an office, but just a back room between the fax machine and the laser printer. But it will let me spend more hours programming while still having an income (before Snowman Studios will start turning a profit... now that Amazon has turned a profit maybe everyone should start talking about my company that way; "When Snowman Studios turns a profit"). But details are slim and I haven't decided whether I'll agree to his terms or not.
For about the last week, I have set up to use primarily Firefox on one computer and IE on the other. After observing my experiences, I have found that things go very smoothly with Firefox (with the exception of a few options that need to be set differently) where IE has shown to be vulnerable to a wide range of pop-up hell options for obnoxious programmers; not even pages that are pranks, but also pages that I visit often that have a popup or two.
My only complaint is that you have to take time to properly import your IE favorites to Firefox. It'll import them fine to begin with, but they will put them all in a sub folder. So until you re-organize everything the bookmarks won't be as easy to use.
If there is a specific time which could be referenced to as the start of my company, Snowman Studios, in many years, that day is today. As Snowman Studios will begin as a game company producing shareware versions of various historical war games, the first major step is to claim webspace. Unfortunately, www.snowmanstudios.com was claimed in the last 12 months. Fortunately, www.snowman-studios.com has not been... until today. As of yet, the DNS hasn't been updated by all of the service providers (atleast, not mine) so you won't be able to go to the website. And when you do, it'll be blank. And when I put something up there, it'll have been written in notepad in about 5 minutes.
How many dogs does it take to change a light bulb?
1. Golden Retriever: The sun is shining, the day is young, we've got our whole lives ahead of us, and you're inside worrying about a stupid burned out bulb?
2. Border Collie: Just one. And then I'll replace any wiring that's not up to code.
3. Dachshund: You know I can't reach that stupid lamp!
4. Rottweiler: Make me.
5. Boxer: Who cares? I can still play with my squeaky toys in the dark.
6. Lab: Oh, me, me!!!!! Pleeeeeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh? Can I? Pleeeeeeeeeze, please, please, please!
7. German Shepherd: I'll change it as soon as I've led these people from the dark, check to make sure I haven't missed any, and make just one more perimeter patrol to see that no one has tried to take advantage of the situation.
8. Jack Russell Terrier: I'll just pop it in while I'm bouncing off the walls and furniture.
9. Old English Sheep Dog: Light bulb? I'm sorry, but I don't see any light bulb.
10. Cocker Spaniel: Why change it? I can still pee on the carpet in the dark.
11. Chihuahua: Yo quiero Taco Bell.
12. Pointer: I see it, there it is, there it is, right there.....
13. Greyhound: It isn't moving. Who cares?
14. Australian Shepherd: First, I'll put all the light bulbs in a little circle...
15. Poodle: I'll just blow in the Border Collie's ear and he'll do it. By the time he finishes rewiring the house, my nails will be dry.
The Cat's Answer: Dogs do not change light bulbs. People change light bulbs. Now, the real question is: How long will it be before I can expect some light, some dinner, and a massage?
These people remind me of some of the feminist groups where they give made-up statistics about how many people have died of anerexia... or maybe when cigarette companies argued that smoking was not bad for you but actually healthy.
