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Plugging away at LFM. Fourteen-hour-straight coding days leave no time to talk, sorry.

Not really. There's not actually a Starbucks close enough to bother with. But this was pretty funny.

I'm hoping that whatever Orkin did works out for me. Apparently, some spider spawned near my home office, perhaps in the attic/crawlspace type thing overhead. For the past few days, I've been seeing little pinhead-sized spiders dropping gracefully from the ceiling, usually a foot or so from my head, which is a little annoying, because it probably means some drop on my head. They're so tiny, I don't really feel threatened by them - they're almost cute - but I know damn well they're not going to stay that way, and wherever they're coming from, there are apparently a fair number of them. Since they're a pale shade of off-white, they're nearly impossible to see unless they're moving or against a dark background. Even then, it takes a minute for it to register that the blurry little thing I'm seeing floating nearby is a tiny spider dropping, at which point it dies. Earlier today, I climbed up on my chair and scoured the ceiling with a flashlight, which makes them stand out a bit better. I killed probably around ten of them with a paperback book. I think I'm going to get some spray and coat the ceiling with it, then close up the room for a little while.

In other news, after a fair amount of searching and messing around, I have discovered the secrets of turning MIDI files into free ringtones for my new little phone, and had some fun with that earlier, assigning songs to various people. Josh is "Sober", by Tool, while Denise is Weezer's "Island in the Sun", which makes her quite happy. Those without a ringer assigned treat me to a somewhat jangly and poppy version of the Misfits' "Last Caress", which makes me quite happy.

I got a copy of the PHP scripts in operation on the website I was using to do this. I think I'll try and set up a similar operation here, partly as a way to learn PHP, something I've meant to do for years.

Currently listening to: "Wild Horses", Tori Amos

By the way, if anyone can provide proof of who does this cover of the DiVinyls "I Touch Myself", I'll send you an Amazon gift certificate for like $5. Yeah, it's not much, but I'm poor. Warning, that file is about 6.5 megs.

By proof, I mean something concrete enough that I could go buy the CD if I wanted. With any luck, the band will come across this and try to sue me, so I'll at least know who did it. The female singer sounds a little like Monique from Save Ferris, but I can't find anything to support that. I know it's not the Genitorturers or Jack Off Jill (although their version isn't bad, just electronic), and I'm pretty sure it's not Eve 6, who do a live version.

If this is your first time on our little internet, first, welcome aboard, and second, I should warn you that searching on Google for "touch myself" is going to yield a lot of results, most of which require a credit card for age verification purposes.

Currently listening to: "Only The Lonely", Roy Orbison

Currently listening to: "(I Would Walk) 500 Miles", Down By Law

Well, I'm only cool instead of super-cool. I think I'm glad - that sounds like a lot of responsibility.



Currently listening to: "Screen", Brad

I'm sitting on my porch, glancing through my mail, and I see this guy knock on my neighbor's door, wait a few minutes, and then start to walk towards me. I think to myself, "Self, that's a salesman," and wonder what he's out selling at 8:30pm. Maybe night vision goggles. Cool.

Turns out he's from Orkin, and they're running a special deal in our neighborhood for the next two days. I talk to him a little, and finally ask him how much, 'cause I'd like to spray the place for spiders, and he says, "$78, every two months or so." Apparently it normally runs about twice that. Geez. I never know how much that sort of thing costs, and I expected less, so I'm disappointed. I tell him I'd love to get it done, but that there's just no way I can afford that.

I get his number so I can call him if I change my mind, and then we stand there for a minute more talking, and I tell him about the three half-dollar sized spiders I've seen inside and outside recently. He tells me they might be brown recluses. Brown recluses, if you aren't familiar with them, can be pretty dangerous.

I tell him a story from back in the day, a couple of weeks ago, when Denise and I are sitting out on the porch having adult beverages. She has a Jack and Coke sitting on the windowsill, and I glance over to see a quarter-sized spider crawling down the window towards it, about a foot above it. I tell her to get her drink, before it goes swimming and we have to explain to its parents how it got drunk.

As she reaches for her drink, that spider's two front legs come up over its head, and that little bastard is ready for battle. If she had hesitated for just a moment, it would have been all over her, but luckily she moved pretty fast, I guess because she didn't see it do that. I sure as hell would've stopped, anyway. As she takes her drink, the thing fucking leaps at her arm, missing her by an inch or two.

Spiders SHOULD NOT BE ABLE TO JUMP. I guess I should be glad they can't fly.

So Michael, the Orkin guy, goes, "Yeah...I hate to tell you, but that sounds like a brown recluse." [A friend later pointed me to a website which says brown recluses don't jump.] I've pondered whether the ones I have are brown recluses, even though they seem a little big for that. I ask him if he can come in and look around the basement with me, so we go downstairs; he's got this little flashlight, and we see about a dozen spiders in the ten square foot area we look at, including this guy, who was a little bigger than a quarter.



Goddamn spiders. I'll go without food if I have to; I signed up. Michael was crazy. He got right up to that one above, and started poking it with the end of his little six-inch flashlight, until the thing leaped at him and we both jumped.

So of course, now every time the air conditioning tickles me, or I get an itch on my neck, or whatever, it's a spider. It has to be. A big hairy one. Damn spiders.

Michael was pretty cool; he seemed like someone I would go out drinking with. We were talking about my neighbors a little later, and I asked him whether he could spray for those; he laughed and said it would have to be cash under the table. They listen to Michael Bolton really loud with the windows open; sounds like a plan to me.

Currently listening to: "Seattle Was A Riot", Anti-Flag

So, yeah, having fun with the phone. It's the little things, what can I say? Rather than litter this page with pictures, I decided they needed their own.

Currently listening to: "Tiny Robots", The Phenomenauts

Last night, one of the rogues in GemStone IV Platinum made me so mad regarding LFM that I almost dropped it entirely. That would be so easy. Just walk into Melissa's office and say, "Hey, I can't do this anymore. It's 90% done, get someone fresh to finish it." Inches away. It's not like I'm even getting GM pay for it; the time I spend on it could be spent at a second job or heaven forbid, with my girlfriend. I've had time to mostly get over it, though, and that is therefore all that will be said on the matter. </whine>

I took that USB network adapter back to Office Max and got a Belkin (model #F5D6050) running 802.11b. Took it home and slapped it on the TiVo, and it worked like a charm. Not going to bother setting up an FTP server on it until/unless I get a DVD burner, but the Home Media stuff is pretty cool. Being able to play your MP3 collection through your TiVo isn't exactly groundbreaking, but having it centralized in the living room instead of drifting in from the office is nice; especially since I can use the TiVo remote to skip the crap songs that I can't figure out why I have, but never delete. Plus, the new adapter was about $30 cheaper, and since it's the only wireless device on the network, I guess I don't care about the speed.

In other news, we unloaded the POD from Simucon yesterday. Because we operate a computer lounge of sorts at the 'con, we have to keep 20+ otherwise-unused computers and monitors around. The Simu office isn't exactly huge, and we seem to keep a lot of pretty useless stuff around, so all of these monitors were lined up against the wall of the corridor in front of my desk, with no real place to go. Ten minutes and one excellent idea later, we all have a dual monitor setup. Problem solved! Except that I now want dual LCD monitors at home.

Josh and I are apparently going to have Mexican now. I feel like a rockstar when I go into El Mariachi, because we eat there so much that they all know us, and we tip so well that they all love us. Denise and I ate there yesterday, and as we walked in, all four of the waitstaff came over and greeted us before splitting up to show us to our table, get us drinks, an ashtray, etc, all without our having to say a word.

I feel like I've forgotten something I was going to say, but I can sense Josh's increasing hunger and I'd rather he not suddenly bite my shoulder, as that would be weird.

Currently listening to: "Mirror People", Love and Rockets

AIM quote from a friend: Incidentally, I feel sorry for you that you got a camera phone. That's like the boy band sell outs of mobile phones.

Thanks! I actually get that sort of thing from her on a fairly regular basis, though, so I'm used to it.

Currently listening to: Boy Bands Josh typing

Here's one more, just 'cause I'm having fun with this thing. Never you mind my mad Photoshop skillz.



Okay, I'm done. Gotta be up at 7:30 in the AM to shut down GemStone's server.

Currently listening to: "Il Matto", Modena City Ramblers

Well, that could have gone better. It's apparently pretty much impossible to get spools of CAT-5 cable in a smallish city after 6pm on Sunday. Good thing there wasn't some sort of life-or-death networking emergency. It's probably for the best, though, as my friend and co-worker Johnny took the opportunity to talk me into just going wireless. So I trundled out today and bought an 802.11g D-Link wireless router, and a cute little Belkin 802.11g wireless USB adapter, which resembles a small radio antenna of sorts.

TiVo doesn't support 802.11g wireless. Damn.

So I'll take the adapter back tomorrow, I guess, and get one running 802.11b. Damn you TiVo, for your backwards ways.

On a good note, though, I also bought a new digital camera today, a Kodak DX4530, as my old Hewlitt Packard has apparently gone to that great memory card in the sky. I'm quite enamoured of the new one. It's easy to use, not cumbersome at all, and appears to be 5.0 megapixels of pure sex.



And here is my car, which I have conveniently shrunken down and painted blue, before placing it on my monitor.



I also got a new mobile phone, which I'm quite fond of so far, although I haven't actually, you know, talked to anyone on it. However, it does have a little camera as well. In fact, here's my new digital camera, as well as proof that I am not a housekeeper.



Obviously, there's a little difference in the picture quality, which is to be expected. I'd like to see the Kodak get free long distance, though. The real bonus is that it's pretty small, which is mainly what I wanted in a phone. Carrying around my previous sizeable one was not really an option when I'm on call and have that phone as well. The camera will be fun for spur-of-the-moment action shots, though. Say, for instance, I set Office Max on fire for selling me the wrong wireless protocol.

Currently listening to: "Sunny Day", Staples

Well, it didn't rain like I hoped for, so I broke down and mowed most of the yard anyway, until it got too dark. I have some vine-like groundcovering weed in the backyard which is fucking vicious. It can't really do anything to stop me from mowing over it, so it retaliates by putting some sort of oil or something into the air which stings the hell out of my eyes. I quit mowing an hour ago, and have taken a shower, and they still sting. Bastard vine. Paving the yard gets more and more tempting.

I was talking to a friend (who shall remain nameless until requesting otherwise) who is a developer for an online game, and not necessarily the one you might think if you know me, and I remarked to him that the system I was looking at seemed like a really good opportunity for griefers to take advantage of a situation to steal other players' stuff. He provided me with the following insight: "Yeah. But that was written back in the day where all players were honorable RPers and not Nintendo generation lunatics whose sole purpose is to cause as much chaos as possible while skirting just under policy radar and giving everyone involved the equivalent of road rage in an online gaming community."

Made me stop and think about Gabe's theory for a minute. Then I fixed the system, yeah, so don't bother lookin' for it.

Now I am going to meander off to try and get some CAT-5 cable, and basically just go shopping for stuff I don't need. I'll bring you a toy if you're good.

Currently listening to: "Your Mother Lied", Amazing Transparent Man

Apparently, I'm the most well-adjusted person ever.

Disorder		Rating
Paranoid:		Low
Schizoid:		Moderate
Schizotypal:		Low
Antisocial:		Low
Borderline:		Low
Histrionic:		Low
Narcissistic:		Low
Avoidant:		Low
Dependent:		Low
Obsessive-Compulsive:		Low
-- Personality Disorder Test - Take It! --

Currently listening to: "Occurrence On The Border", Gogol Bordello

With some help from the lovely and talented Simutronics webmistress Steph, I finally got the site to be pretty much identical in both Mozilla and MSIE. I feel as though I have graduated from some sort of Style Sheet higher education facility, one which gives out self-satisfaction instead of diplomas.

It's raining now, which is basically awesome, as it gives me reason to not mow the yard tomorrow. I'm thinking instead that I'll finally try and hook up the TiVo to the home network, so I can cut off my home phone; TiVo's need for programming information is all we use it for. Not really looking forward to drilling holes and running a bunch of CAT-5, but it'll be nice to have the phone bill gone. Especially since I'm looking at buying a new mobile phone, and actually using the wireless web features.

Watched X2 this morning, and would just like to point out that Famke Janssen is pretty hot with red hair.

Currently listening to: "I Won't Back Down", Johnny Cash

I just talked to my parents (who are, by the way, incredibly cool), and my mom mentioned that the annual Riverbend music festival was going on in their neck of the woods. Riverbend typically has a couple of big name acts who are past their prime (I think I saw .38 Special there once), and a lot of lesser known ones who never quite reached it, but they also occasionally find a gem.

This year, LL Cool J notwithstanding, they have Infradig. Apparently Infradig is a local Chattanooga band who got their start as straight jazz, and now they do a sort of electronic groove beat jazz thing. Jazz is very hit-or-miss with me, but this is good stuff, well worth your precious time. Parts of the song I'm currently listening to remind me of a hopped-up Godspeed You! Black Emperor. They have MP3s on their site. Go forth and check them out. I have spoken.

Currently listening to: "The Dare", Infradig

I managed to fix up the problems caused by absolute positioning, so it looks pretty normal in any given resolution, or should. Unfortunately, for those of you using Mozilla, it's still pretty sketchy. I've been messing with fixing that all day, but not having much luck.

My dear friend Shannon summed it all up quite nicely: "Mozilla is like being stuck in traffic in 99 degree weather, and you're stopped, and the guy next to you is greasy and leering and blasting Whitesnake and all you want to do is exit but then there's a huge accident and you're really not ever going to get off the highway and then your favorite in-car CD starts skipping."

Hooray for Shannon. :)

Today's been annoying. I'm the only OSGM around, and for some reason, lots of people have needed/wanted stuff today, so it's been a constant stream of interruption for a good part of the day. I shouldn't really complain, since that's constituted the vast majority of real work I've done today.

Drinking tonight? Oh yes. Oh yes indeed. Conditions are favorable.

Currently listening to: "True Grit", Crystal Method

Heh...I looked at the site on my girlfriend's computer, and it's pretty wack looking.

Back to the drawing board. Please excuse anything crazy that appears while I meddle.

Well, the redesign is largely done. Pardon any messiness while I get a little more CSS smarts under my belt.

Currently listening to: "James Connolly", Black 47

I think Simucon must have been good for me. That and getting LFM partway out the door.

I'm up way, way too frickin' late working on my website redesign, and I decided to go out for a last smoke before I go to bed. There was a tiny little bird hopping around my porch; he didn't seem the least bit concerned about me. Reminded me a lot of a nun finch I had when I was about 13, named Chester (after the guy in Gunsmoke, 'cause poor Chester the nun finch only had 1.5 legs).

I started noticing a lot of other birds, going about doing their morning bird things, and the sky is this really incredible swirling marbled grey. I felt really alive and stress-free for the first time in over a year. Nice? Nice.

Unfortunately, I'm wide-awake now, and I have to get up in about 3.5 hours, but whatever. It was worth it.

Currently listening to: "Let Down", Radiohead

So Simucon is over for another year or so. Many of the people I talked to agreed that this year was a kindler, gentler Simucon.

I think Simutronics' attempts at trying to handle some of the burden of late night entertainment may be toning down the party atmosphere in some semi-ironic fashion. The 50's party seemed to be especially uninteresting to most con-goers.

Some of the people who really wreck the sobriety curve were noticeably absent as well, by which I mean the people who encourage others to drink heavily through actions, words and examples.

Lastly, it seems to me that the new hotel has a layout which allows for a lot more spreading out. Late at night, people were congregating on the patios off the lobby, in various room parties, around the Radio Free Simucon broadcast, and at least three or four people were back in one of the official parties.

For myself, I took it a lot easier this year. I've made it a point at previous Simucons to put away a fifth of Stoli every night I'm there. None of that nonsense this year. Guess I'm getting old.

My Simucon at a glance:

Simucons attended, including this one		6
Days/nights at hotel		5/4
Fifths of Stoli consumed		1.5
Bottles of Guinness consumed		12
People surprised at Guinness in a bottle		14
Previous times I've had beer and enjoyed it		0
Percent of alcohol compared to last year		32%
Flat tires changed for GemStone IV players		1
Adorable British coworkers met		1
Time spent working at office		21%
Time spent working at hotel		36%
Time spent sleeping		19%
Times molested by females		1
Times molested by males		7
Gyros eaten		1
Number of these statistics guessed at		2

Currently listening to: "Surf Wax America", Weezer

I work in what is essentially a cubicle farm, albeit not a big one à la Office Space by any means. We have an open work area, six of us in a row with big desks pushed together to make three sets of cubicles minus walls. I share one with my blue-haired ninja friend Josh. Anyway, there's a fair amount of distraction going, people walking by, congregating noisily at this desk or that desk and yapping amiably, so I tend to listen to music most of the day via headphones.

Sometimes I get into it, bouncing around mildly in my seat, tapping my foot, and mouthing along.

I wonder if that annoys the guys who sit on either side of me?

Currently listening to: "White Girl", Soul Coughing

So I released Lock Mastery tonight. That's sort of a rush, being something I've worked at off and on for over two years. If you don't know what I'm talking about, you probably don't know me. My name's Aaron, and I have the dream job of being a game developer, except it's not always a dream.

For the longer version, see here. Of course, it's pretty out of date. I'm gonna revise the whole website this month, just like I've told myself every month for the past few years.

Anyway, I've been against the idea of starting a blog, for a couple of reasons. First, everyone and their cow has a blog. I don't really expect that more than two people will read this on a regular basis, unless I climb a tower with a rifle. That'd push it to four or five. Lately, though, it's occurred to me that it might be a nice way to let off steam, without actually having to bitch to someone, something I've been doing a lot lately.

That brings up reason number two; I'll probably let off steam about some of the people that will read this, because they're all internet-savvy, and if you know me well enough to get bitched about, you probably know my domain as well. I sometimes say things I meant to just think when I'm annoyed with someone, which I later regret. Not to their face - I like to think I have more tact and less bravado than that - but these things have a habit of coming back to you. I'm okay with the people that annoy me. Hell, they're the only people I know. So I may well chicken out on discussing work here in anything more than a general sense.

General sense tingling.

The reason I'm so pleased to have Lock Mastery out...wait, I never really cleared that up. I'm a developer for Simutronics, a company which produces MMORPGs. Google it if you must. I was an offsite contractor for a couple of years, but I moved to St. Louis in autumn of 2002 to work in the "real" office (wonder where the word "autumn" comes from? I prefer it to "fall"), which means I now work on all five of the existing games, in addition to the full-time job of designing and developing the Next Big Thing. However, I kept certain responsibilities from my offsite days, when I was the rogue guru for GemStone III (now GemStone IV!), Simutronics' flagship internet RPG, foremost among them being developing a rogue skill called Lock Mastery, which is essentially a set of tools to make GemStone's thieves a more well-rounded and customizeable group of locksmiths. This took way too long.

It's a project which has been sucking out whatever life is left in me after the 80-90 hour work weeks some of us are pulling lately. I don't mind the hours; I love my job, or I wouldn't be doing it. I like the people I work with, as much as I like anyone. LFM (Lock Mastery, I'm sure you can figure out the F) just ended up growing into such a big project, forcing me to rewrite multiple systems, that it became intimidating to even think about. So much easier to push it to the back of my mind. Problem is, it got to where I would feel so guilty about it not being released yet that I couldn't enjoy anything else, like writing and recording music, kicking AI ass at Need For Speed: Underground, etc. So I would usually find some middle ground...something less productive than working on LFM, but also less fun than what I would typically do. It didn't stop the guilt, but it helped me ignore it until I've become thoroughly miserable.

GemStone's producer, Melissa, offered to take it off my hands a few times, transferring it to someone with more time, but I really didn't want that to happen. It would have been admitting failure on my part, something I'm not very good at (admitting it, that is).

So finally, I realized how stupid all this was, and determined to get this project out of the way, once and for all. Unfortunately, work hours really ramped up at the same time, so I'm getting an average of 3-4 hours of sleep a night. I'm pretty strung out lately, finding it hard to be nice to people, especially when they're lazy or stupid, but releasing the first part of LFM symbolizes the proverbial light at the end of the tunnel. For that, I'm grateful.

Wow, I just wrote an emo song about game development, I think. Anyway...they won't all be nearly this long. I just needed to tell someone all that. You'll do.

Currently listening to: "Walking Is Still Honest", Against Me!