Who wants to know more about me?

… or more specifically me to shut up about politics :/

I wish I had a really interesting story to tell. Its always fun to read Mike’s posts about simulations or March’s failures at life (<3 March), but I'm sadly just going along on auto pilot right now. Work was really interesting for a while. I got to dive into true security investigations dealing with a few customer issues. I'm not sure what I'm actually allowed to say publicly (as it involves potential security vulnerabilities in Cisco's products), so it will have to suffice to say that I was at least successful and made some clients happy. Since then, I've had some very mundane bugs to work on and even those have dropped of recently as my manager doesn't want me to start anything big since I'm going to be working a new feature for an upcoming release soon. This last week has been spent reading technical documents, RFCs and functional specifications intermingled with trying to hunt down a bug (I think is) in code I don't have access to see as it is code only licensed by Cisco... suffice it to say, I've been reading a lot of news sites and forums lately. My feature may not start for another week too... and I'm starting to get concerned that not having any observable work products for the last week and the coming week may really hurt me. Outside of work I've gotten into a game called Darkfall. Its a sandbox FPSMMORPG... Think WoW+CSS and everything in the game is full loot with no real safe zones or instances. The game itself has a lot of problems... 4 hour queues to log in for one. Beyond that the server has some bad sync issues that make it hard to play at times and city siege mechanics as well as player alignment need some serious work before they're playable. Sadly, the game is live (in what I've come to believe is the worst game launch ever) so they're actually earning money while pretending to fix the vast array of player complaints and game bugs. Worse, a fellow Sgt in my clan (AOD) seems to have made it his personal mission to try and make me miserable. I'll admit I dealt poorly with some people asking the same questions repeatedly on vent, not paying attention to what is going on or listening to direction and let my temper get ahead of me... but I went a long way to curb my actions and he wouldn't give me an inch of space. He seems to have called a truce for now... but knowing him its almost surly temporary. Ignoring all of the above, the game is actually an amazing amount of fun. PvP actually gets my heart rate up and gets me completely focused... whereas in CSS I can barely be bothered to care that someone dinked me anymore. Last night, our clan alliance broke down somewhat and we easily had a 35-40 vs. 25-30 man fight in our clan city. The fight lasted a couple hours too and it was glorious... except for the fact that we got word that they wanted to challenge us for ownership of the city and I had to wait up until 2a to see what was going on... and came to work at 830a this morning... For anyone who I've neglected to tell, I'm driving into the Akron area this Saturday and will be staying through the next Sunday. Theresa and I have some plans for going out and dealing with various wedding issues, but I'm pretty sure I can work some people in. Give me a call!

The truth hurts…

Bend over generation Y.

http://news.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=09/03/15/1846236

Time for an update?

I was going to have a really sarcastic title with disgusting picture of my knee for you, but the picture didn’t come out… at least not the one I have. I dislocated my patella yesterday playing tackle football (after rolling my ankle – seems I should have stopped while I was ahead). I’m not exactly in excruciating pain anymore, but as today has dragged on it has been slowing getting worse. Everything below my stomach is stiff and hurts to move. I’m even starting to have ambient pain (which will hopefully go away since I just took my pain pill). I have to wear a knee brace and a leg immobilizer for a while and I’ll probably be someone dysfunctional for a few weeks. I’ve been trying to get up and walk around today with just the knee brace on… doesn’t seem like a good idea. I keep getting a pinching in the back of my knee… so I have to remind myself… “baby steps”.

I’ll try to get a picture of the knee, a few people took pictures with their phones… and I’ll try to get some details on the last month sometime soon.

So… about those things called ‘holidays’…

My Christmas vacation felt like a bunch of fire drills. There were of course some great things, but I couldn’t really get over the mental imagery of chimps flinging their poo at each other.

I drove home on the 20th and got home in pretty good time. I was expecting some pretty horrible traffic but didn’t see any really. I had a fairly relaxed afternoon, but the evening got interesting. Theresa mentioned in passing to my mom that we were likely going to my dad’s brother’s for a late dinner Christmas Day which set off a very emotional and depressing sacrificial lamb sequence by my mother. I love my mother dearly… but the wine has a great many effects on her. Sunday was my birthday. It was a little mundane, but pleasant. Sometime during the morning, my dad called to ask me what I was doing for dinner. My mom had asked me to dinner about two and a half weeks before and I told him that. With a very morose tone, he told me that he wanted to take me out to dinner, but “I guess not” (he also proceeded to be angry with me about it for a while… which I don’t understand). Monday and Tuesday were significantly less problematic as I worked both days from my mom’s.

Tuesday night was quite special, if not for Theresa’s attempts at torpedoing my plans. I cut out of work an hour early so I could make some preparations and I took Theresa out to Stan Hywet to see the lights, house, and greenhouse. I wanted to take her out to dinner first, but she insisted that we eat at the stable cafe on the property. When we got there, I got her to skip the cafe until later and we went to the greenhouse. We then took a walk through the outdoor lights in the vineyard and off to the side of the vineyard there was a couple tea pavilions which I walked her over to (there was a very nice miniature town with stars lit up in the trees below them). Sorry to gloss over the details here, but this is where I proposed to Theresa! (and successfully surprised her – which I though would have been impossible). To make a not so long story a little shorter: we toured the house (which is pretty amazing) and I convinced Theresa to let me take her to dinner.

Theresa and I spent Wednesday at her parents which was a very nice day and spent Christmas Eve at my mom’s. Christmas Day was a bit busy… and at the same time, not so much. We opened gifts in the morning and had breakfast, but then I really did nothing while everyone else was running in circles until dinner… which is where life gets fun again. Dinner was supposed to be at 4, so I told my dad and his family my brother, his girlfriend, Theresa and I would be in East Akron at 6. Dinner was an hour late so we didn’t get to leave until 5:30… My aunts and uncles didn’t say a word… but my dad had to get sour that we were a few minutes late. I don’t really remember what happened Friday. I’m sure I did something… I know I was alive… but that’s about it.

Saturday morning, Theresa and I drove down to Columbus to visit with my Sister and dad for a few days. Mike was leaving for his girlfriend’s in PA Sunday morning, so I went to visit him and his family for a few hours Saturday. Saturday night my family and I all went out to dinner and had a nice evening… except for where my dad said that he had a “stipulation” for Theresa’s and my wedding and if we didn’t meet it he wouldn’t be coming… OH BOY! Sunday, Theresa and I visited Grace and the Martin’s then met a friend of Theresa’s at Polaris… then spent the afternoon asking my dad to not leave, which he subsequently ignored. Theresa and I stuck around Monday so I could spend some time with Keith. We saw “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button”, which is a bit long but very good (in my opinion).

I’m not sure what I did the Tuesday after, other than driving home. Seems to me I did something relatively important… but its just not coming to me… Wednesday Tim and I wend shooting somewhere down in the Falls. I have to say, the AK47 is a lot of fun to shoot. It will be a while until I get a rifle myself, but I’m definitely looking into a pistol, sooner than later. Theresa and I made every effort to actually stay awake until Midnight… which we actually did without much trouble… I feel old for having to say that. Thursday and Friday were a lot of family stuff. Thursday, Theresa’s parents and an in house Mass and my mom cooked dinner; Friday we spent with Theresa’s parents. Saturday was unique… as it was my father’s birthday (and my adopted father’s birthday). That wouldn’t normally have been an “issue”, except that my dad ignored my calls and voice mails for 4 days… It turns out I didn’t attempt to see him enough… My punishment, beyond his ignoring my calls, he wasn’t home like he said he would be and made me wait two hours to see him… then we got pizza… The next morning to drove home… happy to be leaving idiocy behind but wishing Theresa was with me.