Last night something big happened. Yes, Barack Obama became the first black president of the United States of America. Yes, never before has the promised land, mentioned in Dr. Martin Luther King’s last speech, been so tangible. Yes, years of corrupt and evil politics are coming to an end and the Republican party is being forced to reckon with the fact that the world has turned and left them behind. All of these things happened last night, but they were not the most important thing that happened last night. Last night the youth and minorities in America stood up and made a change with the weapon that tyranny fears most, our freedom.

Barack Obama is bringing hope back to America. I will never understand how the older people in this nation cling to a party that has been hell bent on destroying this country. The past eight years have been hellish as I watched our freedoms being cannibalized one by one in the name of “security.” For the past eight years America has seemed a cowardly nation ruled by fear. I have always believed that together we could fix any problem America might have, but the one thing missing was the motivating factor of hope. Well, we got that hope last night.

As the months go by and we begin healing this nation I want all of you to keep one thing in mind. Barack Obama is not responsible for this. You are. All you young voters, black voters, hispanic voters, female voters, all of you did this. Barack Obama and his advisor’s may have been the catalyst that set all of this in motion, but ultimately it was all of you that made this happen.

Last night, as the votes were coming in and this historic moment was going down, I spent the time playing games with my 17 year old daughter. When I look at her now, I think to myself that she will never know a world where a black man being president is less than reality. She will never know a world where a woman could run for the presidency and stand a good chance of getting there. But best of all, she will know a world where American democracy and the freedoms created by our nations founders are alive and well. She can grow up being proud to be an American and I will be able to tell her all about the time that the youth of America stood up and changed the world.

Believe, believe in me, believe
Believe that life can change
That youre not stuck in vain
Were not the same, were different tonight
Tonight, so bright
Tonight

I have a very hot and cold relationship with my chosen profession. While I occasionally get to whip up all new code, I am often times maintaining someone else’s code or hunting down some sort of bug. Stripped down to its skins, my job is basically one where people present me with a problem and it is my job to solve the puzzle and figure out what is causing the bug and come up with a fix of some sort. There is a big difference between coding up something that is all your own creation and being forced to fix other people’s broken stuff. It weighs you down sometimes. You begin to feel like the downtrodden janitor, shuffling off to clean up the giant mess those damned spider monkeys made in aisle 10 all the while daydreaming in secret of the day you will make your giant, brightly lit debut in the latest musical on Broadway.

However, today is not that day for me. I managed to solve a huge problem for my team where I work. I wont go into too many specifics, but the bug ended up being a bug in our app server JBoss and not in our code. Many people have tried to squash this bug, but it always came back. I don’t want to toot my own horn too much, but I am incredibly proud to have been the one who finally figured out the problem.

It is times like this that I am reminded why I became a software developer. I always tell people that it was computer games that got me into computer science. Thats true, but after a day like today I remember that its not just because I really really wanted to to program games, but its because solving real life problems by creating software is very much like a game itself. In video games you are typically presented with a problem to solve or goal to reach and you take steps to make progress to that end. Its the same with software development. Both activities push the same buttons in my brain. When I finish a game I feel great, and after finishing up a bit of code or fixing some huge bug like today, the feeling of accomplishment is the same, only in the case of software development it is a lot more “real.”

Hopefully I can keep this in mind the next time I start to get sick of what I do for a living. I just need to remember that its just a game like any other task I set out to accomplish on one of my xbox games. Except for that Call of Duty 4 “Mile High Club” achievement … that shit was created by Satan himself.

Code monkey very simple man, with big warm fuzzy secret heart…

It has been 7 months since I have even logged into my blog here. Aside from the fact that there is nothing new to read, I had to face an ungodly amount of comment spam awaiting moderation. I know what my problem is. I want everything I have to say on this site to either be informative, fun to read, or just push your mental buttons. The truth is that I often think of things I want to blog about but I spend hours thinking about the topic to the point that I become mentally exhausted by the subject before I have even written a single word down. So what I end up with is a teeny little blog with a few pointless ramblings about computer shit and video games.

You’d think I would be bursting with ideas for posts, given that I am now a parent, but I just fell off the blogging train and failed to ever buy a second ticket. I could spend days writing backlogged blog posts about my experiences being a daddy, but I wont. Heather does a marvelous job of blogging about Kaylee and you can read all about her ( there are pictures too ) here.

I think I should have been a graphic designer. I say this because whenever I get the idea in my head to build or redesign a site I throw myself into the graphic design and layout of the site, but after I am done I am pathetic about actually generating content for it. I’m not saying that I am particularly good at design or anything, I am just saying that I get fired up about doing it. I think that in general, I don’t find my job particularly rewarding as far as creativity is concerned. Don’t get me wrong, there is a ton of opportunity for creativity where software engineering is concerned, however, the subject matter is forced on you. It would be like an artist being paid to paint a picture of a flower. There are a bazillion different directions they could take, but if they aren’t excited about the subject matter it can tend to stifle the desire to jump into the work.

Anyway, the original point of this post was to basically say that I need to stop trying to create the best content I can at the expense of writing any content at all. I hope to start blogging more, even if it is all just pointless stories about the minutiae of my mundane life. I know from reading others blogs, and watching way too much youtube that that stuff can be pretty fun reading.

I‘m the new model. I’ve got nothing inside.

My biggest disappointment with windows vista so far has been the sound drivers. To put it simply … Creative’s driver support for vista blows. Yeah yeah, I have heard all about how Microsoft removed directX sound hardware support for vista, and in doing so, shafted all the sound card manufacturers out there, however, there was one problem that seemed like an obvious omission and was a giant thorn in my side for a long time. There was no microphone boost option in vista and while my microphone worked, it was barely audible even if I had the damned thing inside my mouth.

A fix for this has been found, and I am thoroughly pissed off at creative for not including a way to enable/disable this option in their software. Before I go on with my bitching, here is the fix. You have to have a certain registry entry set in order to enable the mic. boost. If you are running windows vista 32 bit edition, turn on mic. boost with this:

A registry file to turn mic. boost on, in the 32 bit edition of vista

and

A registry file to turn mic. boost off, in the 32 bit edition of vista

Right click on those links.  Choose “Save File As…”, and then just double click the files to update your registry entries to enable the mic. boost feature.

If you are running the 64 bit version of vista, youll have to download the files, open them in a text editor and replace the 0007 with 0000. If none of this makes sense, you probably shouldn’t be messing with your registry settings, as it can have dire consequences for the well being of your machine. Proceed with caution and at your own risk. These registry hacks have been known to kill people. One thing to note … this setting will NOT enable a checkbox or any sort of indication that it is on. Your mic. will just be boosted. So don’t go looking for the mic. boost checkbox after you run this, hoping to verify that it worked. Test it by hooking up your mic. and listening for yourself.
So, why am I pissed at creative over this? Because this is the sort of thing that would solve what is a HUGE problem for many of their customers, and it is an incredibly simple fix. All they need to do is add a checkbox to their own software that enables/disables this registry entry. That would be 10 minutes worth of work, tops. Instead, they are lazy and they just don’t care that their customers cant get BASIC FUNCTIONALITY to work on their products under vista. Shame on you creative labs. I thought you knew better.

[UPDATE]:

I replaced the text with links to actual registry files. My apologies go out to everyone who looked at the mangled text and wondered why it causing registry editor to puke.

Earlier today a friend of mine brought this blog post to my attention. In it the author talks about the quantum nature of mentally perceived age. He says “In my case, I was 22 until TB was born, at which point I was suddenly 32.” Having just had a baby of my own, this statement hit a little close to home for me. This year I will turn 30. Honestly, I really am not the kind of person who cares that I am reaching that age, but it is somewhat of a milestone that I cannot ignore.

For me, my “22 to 32″ moment happened not when we had Kaylee, but when we decided to really try to begin having a baby. If you rewind the clock by 12 months or so you’ll find me, unemployed, struggling with a monster of a semester in school, and trying to make a baby. Heather and I knew we wanted to have children, and we also knew that we wanted to have them before we got much older. However, I was working a job that seemed instable ( turns out it was ), and I was not yet done with school. We used those excuses for a long time, trying to plan for the perfect time in which to conceive a child. However, one day we realized that time stops for no one and while a bit of planning is a good thing, we were likely waiting for the “perfect time” that would likely never come. We decided “to hell with it” and we stopped planning and preventing and just let things happen. This was my “22 to 32″ point.

It was at this point that I took a survey of my life and decided that I had wasted enough time. I was about to graduate and begin just working for a living. I really enjoy my field, but my career is NOT my life. I could see life becoming a giant rut of work, dinner, TV, sleep … rinse and repeat. It would be easy to just live out my life working for a paycheck, coming home at night to play world of warcraft, eat something and then go to sleep. We wanted a child, and having one was a great way to introduce some change into my life.

When people find out that you are having a baby, you will constantly have people telling you things like “Say goodbye to sleep!” or “There is going to be poop all over the place!” These things are absolutely true. However, as undesirable as they may be, they are introducing some much needed “newness” into my life. I may not be able to put as many hours as I want into world of warcraft, but I realize that things like world of warcraft are no longer as important as they used to be.

John Lennon once said “Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.” Truer words were never spoken. Despite all the work involved in raising a child, I don’t lament the loss of freedom to do whatever the hell I want. I still do things I enjoy, however, I now also have a beautiful daughter that I will eventually be able to share these things with. Speaking of that … I need to look into getting her some WoW clothes. … hey, I’m 30, not dead.

Even though the race may never be won
I can lay like a dandy, get heavy in the sun

Let’s face it. I’m a dork. I love computers and gadgets. I am a devout gamer. I also know entirely too much about the story lines of dragonball Z and sailor moon to ever hope to not be considered a dork. However, when it comes to anime, I came to enjoy it in what I would consider a very roundabout manner.

Like many fascinations of mine, this one too has its roots in video games. As a kid, I fell in love with RPGs. Among my favorites were the final fantasy and dragon quest series of games. After a while, I discovered that there were games in these series that were released only in Japan. I vowed that I would one day play them.

Then one day I discovered that people had written emulators for the PC that could play ROMs of NES and SNES games. I quickly hunted down ROMs of all the unreleased games I always had wanted to play. It became rapidly apparent that I was not going to get far without knowing Japanese. So I promptly enrolled in Japanese 101 at college. This was the beginning of my love affair with Japanese language and culture. This is also the point at which I finally start peeking into the world of anime. While most people decide to want to learn Japanese because of anime, I wanted to watch anime because I was interested in Japanese.

I ended up taking all the Japanese courses they offered at college, and following that up with private lessons after that. However, after I moved to Colorado, I sort of fell out of sync with my Japanese studies. My recently re-sparked interest in anime once again stems from a bubbling desire within me to begin studying Japanese again. The problem with this is that I am sort of on my own, and learning a language like Japanese without using it in actual conversation is difficult if not impossible.

I am on the lookout for a copy of the Japanese rosetta stone software. I figure it would be good for rebuilding my eroded vocabulary and possibly for hearing those words used in sentences. This is where anime comes in for me. I always watch it in its original Japanese, not because I am an elitist snob, but because it is one of the best ways to help solidify your vocabulary.

I also discovered this nintendo DS software. I think it wounds pretty amazing. It is basically a kanji dictionary with lookup functions that allow me to look up kanji using Japanese or English. It also can apparently translate to/from Japanese/English. I have no idea how good it works, but that is incredible functionality for such an affordable product. For those wondering: The Nintendo DS has no region lockout on software for it, meaning that American DSs can play foreign games and software on them without use of any modifications to the system.

I also need to brush up on my kana. This wont be hard, but one thing that many books gloss over is proper stroke order when writing kanji/kana. This website solves that problem quite nicely! It provides movie files of every kana, illustrating proper stroke order.

I am seriously considering taking the Japanese courses offered at the local college here in town. Not only would it be a GREAT refresher, but it would also provide me with social links and possibly introduce me to someone willing to give private lessons. If I am serious about learning Japanese, there is no substitute for actually holding a conversation with someone in the language.

Despite finally getting my hands on a PS3, I have not been playing PS3 games very much. Since there is nothing coming out for the PS3 or the 360 that really puts the fire in my cockles, I have been catching up on older PS2 games that I have wanted, but never gotten around to dropping the cash on. Here is the list of games that I have purchased in the last month and intend on playing through this summer ( or whenever I get around to it ):

• .Hack//G.U. Vol. 1 Rebirth
• Xenosaga Episode 2
• Xenosaga Episode 3
• Odin Sphere
• Soul Calibur 3
• Valkyrie Profile 2: Silmeria
• Rogue Galaxy

and on top of that I am currently playing through:

• Final Fantasy 12
• Kingdom Hearts 2
• Pokemon: Pearl
• Still addicted to World of Warcraft

Yeesh. Because I am an uber-geek and have a lust for RPG games, each of these games in the list, with the possible exception of soul calibur, is, at minimum a 40 hour affair. Its going to take me ages to finish these. However, I had to have them, and almost all of them were $29 or lower in price.

Because I am now graduated and have free time, I wanted to let myself go and just do lazy things that I like. While gaming is a hefty chunk of that to-do list, it is not the whole thing. I am finding myself getting back into Japanese, and Japanese related things again. I want to post about this separately though, so more on that later on. However, as an extension of this, I am wanting to get into modeling again. I have a weak spot for sculptures, and while many anime related ones are basically 3D panty shots of little girls, I really have a soft spot for quality work. My goal is to purchase some sculptures to admire, buy shelves to display them on, and eventually get into building/painting them myself. However, that seems like such a tall order … so I hope that in the meantime my wife doesn’t think I am some kind of wacko buying up anime toys,that often times go into great detail on … ummm … girl parts (warning, that link is kinda NSFW).

Of course, many of the models are just cool looking, and sexy, without being overly pornographic. For example, check out this Harui statue. The detail on the guitar is awesome, and the stockings are real mesh. Thats cool stuff to me. I really would love to be able to buy a resin kit of something like that and have the skill to glue it together and paint it up that well. *sigh* While we are on the subject, check out this figure of Mitsuru Kiryjo from persona 3. To me … thats bad ass. What can I say, I have a thing for girls with swords. Plus I am a huge fan of the persona games, and the character art in particular. I will have that figure one day.
Anyway, I guess now that the pressure of school is off I am letting myself spend a lot more free time on my hobbies and getting back into those things that were too expensive/time consuming while I was a student.

I have recently gone on a gaming gear spending spree. You see, after I graduated, I was given a lot of money as a graduation gift from various family members. Since I have a well paying job and we are doing well financially, I thought “what the hell”, I will spend this money on toys for myself. So what did I do? I went out and bought a playstation 3 of course. … I sometimes wonder what it would be like to actually have willpower.

Yes, despite me ranting about the ludicrous price and about how much more value there was to be had with the xbox 360, I ended up caving in not 6 months later. I still think that $600 is WAY beyond the comfort zone for most people, but I dont regret dropping that many clams on this toy. Video games have always enthralled me. Gaming is my hobby, and this was a rare occasion that I would have the extra cash to drop on it. However, what ended up being the biggest deciding factor was the fact that it plays blu-ray movies.

We recently bought a giant 47 inch LCD HDTV and I have been dying to see some real HD content on it, other than cable TV. Let me tell you, I am NOT disappointed AT ALL. However, getting to that point was fraught with peril. I shall explain.

I bought a PS3, however, I then also had to drop $60 on an HDMI cable in order to take full advantage of the system and my TV. At first, everything is amazingly great. However, after 3 days, the PS3 turns on, but my TV doesn’t detect a signal. I discover that I can fiddle with the HDMI cable to get a picture, but I decide that I am not going to take a chance so I return the PS3 while it was still only a couple days old in order to make sure it wasn’t the system itself. Turns out it wasn’t. I thought it might have been the cable. I return my $60 HDMI cable and try another one. Same problem. After a bunch of fiddling around, I discover that I can set the PS3 to run at 720p, rather than 1080p and I can get a picture. However, the signal is bad and the screen occasionally cuts out. After 2 days of this, 720p stops working. Grrr. At this point, I know it is my TV. Somehow the HDMI port on my new westinghouse 47inch LCD HDTV has given up the ghost. However, all is not lost. I buy an HDMI to DVI cable to run the PS3 video signal through, and run the audio through the other ports. That works like a charm and I am back to 1080p goodness. The TV debacle pisses me off though. Im not sure what westinghouse is going to do about it, but at least in the mean time I can use the new PS3 I bought at true HD resolutions.

We ended up buying mission impossible 3 on blu-ray in order to test it out. WOW. It looks so amazingly good that it is hard to put into words. For the first time, movies look way better on my home TV than they do at the theater. However, blu-ray movies are not only expensive as HELL, there just aren’t very many good ones out yet. This is where netflix comes in. We can rent all the blu-ray we want without any alterations to our current plan. Very nice.

Seriously though, what the hell is up with blu-ray? I am a fan of the mission impossible movies. I have 1 and 2 on DVD, but I bought 3 on blu-ray. After SEEING 3 on blu-ray I would very much like to get 1 and 2 on blu-ray, however, everywhere I have looked, you can ONLY get 1 and 2 on blu-ray if you bought all three movies in the $80 mission impossible pack. It is the same for the three matrix movies on HD-DVD.

Listen guys, I like movies, but it is a rare day that I will comfortably drop $80 on a DVD set that contains only THREE movies. And this is coming from a fan! A fan who actually ENJOYED mission impossible 2 for God’s sake! It is even worse for TV series on blu-ray. HALF of soprano’s season 6 ( thats right … the first half of the season … not even the whole season ), costs $100 on blu-ray.

I realize that this is because the format and technology is still new and that it blu-ray becomes popular, we will see prices come down. For now though, my blu-ray purchases will be few and far between though.

So what about the games for the PS3? Well … they are just alright. Ok, I am half way through resistance: fall of man, and it is a lot of fun so far, but its just an FPS. I *LIKE* FPS games, but after having played gears of war and rainbow six: vegas, resistance feels dated, gameplay wise. Its a great game, but give me gears over it any day.

Untold Legends: Dark Kingdom gets a similar initial assessment from me. Its fun, but only because I am a fan of the diablo/baldur’s gate: dark alliance style of game. The graphics are good, but nothing that made me say “Wow! THIS is next gen!”

MLB 07: The Show. Why do I ever even buy sports games? I start out really wanting to play them, but then I quickly lose interest. I suppose that it will be nice to have a baseball game for when that rare desire strikes, but as of right now I have only played this game a few times. Id get up to bat and be struck out every time. I don’t yet understand the batting system enough to know how to read a pitch. I’m glad I bought the game, because it will scratch that baseball itch when I get it, but I have been distracted by all the other games I have for now. The graphics on it seem … ugly. Parts of it look really good, but the players looks like animated mannequins. Ive seen better on my xbox 360.

However, if you have/get a PS3 … download the ninja gaiden sigma demo. Wow. You will be blown away by how crisp and fluid the game looks/plays. Thats going to be a winner.

So, blu-ray is too expensive and there are no really great movies out in the format. The system cost an arm and a leg, and the games are just “meh.” Do I regret dropping the money on the PS3? Not at ALL. The PS3 has opened my eyes to just what TRUE HD has to offer to gaming. Microsoft recently released the “elite” version of their xbox 360. This verions has an HDMI port … and it is the ONLY WAY to get an HDMI port on your 360. Without this port, 360 games will never look as crisp as they do on the PS3. However, there is no way in HELL that I am dropping $470 on ANOTHER 360 JUST for that port. Its too bad, really, because it makes the PS3 just feel a whole lot more next gen. Granted, the 360 has a lot better games, but the whole HDMI thing really bothers me.

In buying the PS3, I am making an investment of sorts. I know that there are killer app games coming to the system ( Final Fantasy 13, Metal Gear Solid 4, etc). I know that one way or another, blu-ray movies will come down in price eventually. In the mean time, I am really just enjoying being on the cutting edge of video gaming for a while.

In the middle of the maelstrom of activity that was the month of May, there was one event that overshadowed everything else: The arrival of our little girl.

Yes, in fact, she is a she. She was born on May 13th at 3:58 A.M.. Yes, mother’s day. The whole labor process went so much smoother than I was prepared for. I was at the hospital, ready for a marathon coffee-fueled session of worry and non-sleep. However, everything happened so fast that it was kind of a blur. 1cm dilated, 1.5cm dilated, and then suddenly … BAM! … 10cm dilation, lets make this baby.

Heather was a true champ. I have always had the utmost love and respect for her, but seeing her pull through the labor as well as she did left me in awe. Women are amazing, and though I didn’t really need any more reasons, seeing her grow, foster, and deliver our child like she did left me filled with immense pride and utter love for my wife.

Little Kaylee Jane is beautiful. There is not a single thing wrong with her and she is the cutest, most gorgeous thing I have ever seen:

I have told my friends before that while I think the notion of love at first sight is a nice thought, I just didn’t think it was very realistic. However, after seeing Kaylee for the first time, I now know that I was wrong. It is very realistic and happens every day. Seeing her for the first time was like being hit with an emotional sledgehammer … erm, in a good way. The following day, my feelings could best be described as feeling both terrified and madly in love simultaneously. Terrified because I began to wonder if I could handle the massive life changes coming my way, and madly in love because I didnt want to be separated from her for a single instant.

I am happy to say that the feelings of terror subsided very quickly. You rapidly get the hang of knowing what she wants/needs when she is crying and it feels SO damned good when you hear it, respond to it, and you realize that you are actually doing it. You are giving your child what it needs and building a bond of trust and love that will enrich your life in ways you never dreamed of.

I have been back at work for over a week now and every single day it is an absolute pleasure when I go home, knowing that I will get to feed, hold, and bond with my daughter. I often think of the years to come and how I will influence her life, teach her right from wrong, teach her about the world she lives in, both good and bad. I think about the fun little things like getting to buy her legos and help her put them together, or teach her how to use email. I think about how much I love my family and how I finally have a chance to pay that forward. She is without a doubt the greatest love of my life and from here on out I am forever changed by this little girl who may not yet know my name, but I know she knows that I am her daddy.

Plus she looks so cute in the bunny hat!

Yep, I graduated. Considering that the first time I took a college level course was in the Fall of 1995, thats pretty impressive. Twelve years of working on the degree on and off and finally finishing the damned thing. Back in the mid nineties, as my friend Jason over and elluzion.net can attest to, I simply was not ready to be a college student. I was an energetic high school graduate, ready to experience life out on my own, for better or worse.

I believe that my College education has only benefited from it. Had I tried to stay in school back then, I would have scraped by, just like I did in high school. (My GPA was a solid 3.53 overall with a 3.76 in CS courses … not bad for a straight C high school student) By taking the time to waste some time, fall on my ass, and experience the working life without a college education, I found my motivation and some much needed direction for actually earning that degree.

Just like everything else in my life, I had to find out the hard way rather than just taking peoples word for it. Sure it would have been nice to have graduated much earlier, but then again I would not be the same person had I done it that way. I guess I am just the type of person who sticks the fork in the electrical outlet, gets his ass shocked off, and from then on KNOWS not to do that, rather than simply taking the advice of everyone around me.

Anyway, yay me.