March 3, 2008
Just finished Ratchet & Clank Future: Tools of Destruction for the Playstation 3. I was really looking forward to the game after it was announced, and received it as a birthday gift from Eric and Sundee. This was the fourth game in the series — the first three were for the Playstation 2. As expected, the graphics were excellent, very bright, cartoonish, and high-definition. Game play was pretty similar to the previous games in the series, so there wasn’t really anything too new or innovative about it. Overall it was fun, but not one of my favorites. If this was the first game in the series, or if I hadn’t played the other ones previously, it would probably have ranked higher, but since I’ve seen (and played) almost the same game before, I can’t give it a top rating. If you haven’t played the other games, it’s definitely worth playing, though you’ll miss out on lots of the back plot and characters.
Posted in gaming 
1 Comment »
March 2, 2008
My job was in a bit of a holding pattern my first month as we worked out answers to some questions about how my team was going to fit into the company. That was straightened out a couple weeks ago and now we’ve started doing real work. Two weeks ago (the week of February 18) my team and I spent the week in Denver getting a crash course on “how things work” from the operations team there.
The trip was very productive, and Denver (”Tech Center”) seems like a pretty nice place. It’s not that unlike much of Northern Virginia, in that everything is pretty much brand new and squeaky clean. The weather was great, reaching almost 60 degrees most days, while it was in the 30s in Virginia. And of course looking out the office window and seeing the Rocky Mountains covered in snow not far away was a beautiful sight.
Back in our temporary Virginia office, we’re getting more and more overcrowded. We’re in a temporary rented room in an office building, sitting at a couple rows of desks (no cubes or offices). The room is sized for 17 people, and we’re at 20 so far, and have some more people starting work soon and often have visitors, so it’s really cramped. We’re scheduled to move into our new “permanent” building down the road on April 2, and we’re all looking forward to that.
Posted in work 2 Comments »
February 9, 2008
I’ve been a Firefox user… for as long as I can remember. It started because I was a Windows user, and FF was vastly better than Internet Explorer (and still is). Since switching to Mac about two years ago, I’ve stayed with Firefox. I gave Apple’s Safari browser a few tries now and then, but always ran into major complaints with how it worked, and didn’t see the need to investigate them.
Since I know most Mac people use Safari, and a fair number of “people who know what they’re doing” use it, I’m going to give it another try. One of my favorite things about Firefox is its plug-in architecture, allowing anyone to develop very useful add-ins to the program. Firebug is essential for any web developer, so unless Safari has something similar, I’ll still be falling back on Firefox for development.
Do you have any preferences one way or another?
$x = open(can_of($worms));
Posted in computing 7 Comments »
January 26, 2008
I’ve been lagging behind in my blog posts… probably something to do with going back to work. My Xbox 360 has been complaining a lot too about how I’ve not been playing very much. One piece of important news that I haven’t posted about yet is…
We adopted Pete! Pete was our foster dog (of course), and we really liked him. He was adopted out to a family, but he didn’t do well in their home — he would bark all day long while they were at work. We never had this problem when he was at our house, so we’re assuming it was because he was alone there, but had Max here to keep him company. In any case, he was returned to the rescue, and we staked our claim.
Pete’s about two years old, and is a smallish Chocolate Lab. He’s small, but still pretty heavy — 75 pounds or so. While he is generally pretty mellow, we have noticed that he seems to have some minor issues needing work. When we first had him, we thought he was a dominant dog, but now we think he’s somewhat submissive, but wants to be dominant… so he tries to act dominant whenever he can (kind of a bully). I’m sure we’ll work out his issues over time.
One embarrassing event with Pete was two weeks ago at the Reston Dog Park, when he lifted up his leg and peed on the leg of a man at the park. Kathie was the closest and apologized profusely; fortunately the man was very friendly and understanding. We’re not sure if Pete was marking his “property”, or was just aiming for some spot on the ground and didn’t care who was in his way, but we’ve been keeping a close eye on him at the park since then!
Kathie has written about Pete on her blog as well, of course!
Posted in dogs 1 Comment »
January 23, 2008
Nothing like sitting in a meeting at work (in Philly)… looking at my watch (well, at my blackberry in this case — I haven’t worn a watch in years) and seeing it’s 5:53… and looking at my e-mail confirmation for my Amtrak Acela train leaving the station at 6:07.
Quick goodbyes, elevator 10 floors down, find a Taxi, hit every red light in Philly, get to 30th Street Station, find a Kiosk, insert credit card, navigate menus to print internet-purchased ticket, get a boarding pass, find the right stairway, jump on train, doors close. Whew!
Of course it’s still not my favorite thing to lose an entire day (leave the house at 6:40am to get to Union Station in time for the 8am train, then get back to Union Station at 7:45pm to arrive home by around 8:30, but the train trip itself is actually pretty nice (about 97 minutes each way), but it is nice that HQ is reachable for day-trips.
Once the train is built-out to Reston (hahahahahahahah!)… I can’t even complete that sentence. When I moved here almost 13 years ago they were talking about building the train out to Reston. But even if they did, it would be so much more convenient: Drive to the Reston station, take the light rail to West Falls Church, switch trains and get on the metro, take that to Metro Center, change to a different train to Union Station, then get on Amtrack. Cake!
Posted in misc 1 Comment »
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