Xcuses for Rambling

Both of my sons have been diagnosed as high functioning autistic.  I have not, but based on how closely the boys behavior parallels mine, there’s a very high probability.  I’m not going to fall for the “correlation equals causation” fallacy, but let’s take it as given that I have autistic tendencies.  One of the big tendencies is the desire for stability and routine.  So why do I have an urge in late spring every year to either move cities or change jobs?

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The recent catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico with the Deepwater Horizon rig failure got me thinking about disasterous events and how we deal with them.  I’ve learned over the years that I don’t tend to do my best thinking when I’m making things up as I go along, so I have gotten into the habit of periodically thinking about the future and making plans in case something bad happens.  This may seem morbid or depressing, but it’s the only way I have figured out to be prepared for dealing with disasters in a way that doesn’t involve curling into a ball and hoping it all goes away.

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I’m a busy guy.  I have two boys, commute two hours a day to my full-time job and have plenty of outside interests I like to pursue.  I like to prioritize things in order of importance.  Given that my blog is not something I get paid for, it often falls behind many, many other things when I do the mental calculation of “What should I be spending my time on now?”

In addition, I don’t like to just throw things up here without spending time on it to make sure it’s coherent, doesn’t contain spelling errors and is generally worth the time it would take someone to read it.  If I wanted to make public the comments I’ve pulled out of my posterior, I’d put them up on Twitter (for the things I want the whole world to see) or some similar social networking site.  Those locations are full of stream of consciousness information and my half-assed musings fit right in there.  But for my personal site, I’d like to keep things just a bit more polished. . . even if it means my posts here tend to be more infrequent than my posts elsewhere.

I recently got a question from a friend of mine that essentially said “I’d like to be awesome at UNIX, but I’m not sure where to start or what to do”.  She’s a pretty nerdy woman who runs Linux on her laptop and has serious geek tendencies already, so I wrote up the following advice.

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I recorded the a review for the Interactive Distractions podcast for their Mass Effect 2 spoiler episode.  I’m posting my notes here as well as the mp3 of the audio file.  There will be minor spoilers for ME2 below the fold, so don’t click through if that’s going to be an issue for you.

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I and my family have had annual passes to Universal Orlando and Islands of Adventure for several years now.  We’ve had Preferred Annual passes so long, we still have the old-school plastic cards that they don’t give out anymore (except to people who have Premiere Annual passes for almost $100 more).  We try to make a trip from Atlanta down to Orlando at least a couple times a year.  The weather’s much better down in Florida which helps mitigate the Seasonal Affective Disorder I sometimes suffer; and the water and roller coasters seem to have a very positive affect on the behavior of my boys in mitigating their Autistic tendencies.

However, until this most recent trip, there were always smaller attractions in the park we’d skipped.  We resolved that oversight. Continue reading

When I was deciding what topics to study in college, I had several options.  Computers were cool, but I didn’t own a computer and thought it was a pre-requisite (this was back in the ’80s when computers were expensive and nobody had e-mail).  Science seemed a viable option, but I didn’t think I had the mindset to be a research scientist.  I liked being in front of people and liked having my summers free, so I finally settled into teaching science, Physics to be precise.

Never did I think about going into Databases or Economics because they seemed stodgy and boring.  These days, I find myself wishing I’d looked a little more at those areas. Continue reading

I have the opportunity to view the things on the Internet while I work.  Sometimes this is a hideous time sink and something I need to prevent myself from engaging in.  A good portion of the time it’s a good way to spend some down time while I’m waiting for a test run to complete.  If I find something particularly amusing, I’ll forward it on to one or more of my circles of friends so they can enjoy the same funny.

Given the slowness with which I produce original content, this is the next best thing to entice people to give more weight to what I post to e-mail lists, Twitter, Facebook, Plurk, etc.  I admit that this is a somewhat self-serving, but will accept the fact that I care that people listen to what I say. . . if I didn’t care, I wouldn’t post.  If I didn’t care, I wouldn’t put it somewhere where I know people are going to see it. . . which, for the most part, is why I don’t really care whether or not people read what I post here.  I don’t go out of my way to publicize my posts here and, if anyone besides me regularly reads what I post here, I’d be very surprised.

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Before I tell you this story, I need to tell you another story. . .

I typically attend multiple conventions per year.  Last year I attended Blizzcon and GenCon on the dime of Upper Deck.  I judge tournaments for them and, in turn, they fly me to cool places, put me up in a hotel, feed me, pay me enough to feed myself and give me some cool swag for my troubles.  I also live in Atlanta, so I attend DragonCon every year since it just involves me driving 30 minutes down the road.  In 2008 at GenCon I was talking to some of the Upper Deck folks who were lamenting the fact that they had four convention weekends in a row.  The cons, in order, were San Diego Comicon, GenCon, Blizzcon and PAX (which was the same weekend as DragonCon).  For those who attend conventions, they tend to be enjoyable affairs where the players and attendees see and buy cool stuff.  For workers, it’s also enjoyable, but it’s also a lot of hard work, sore feet, scratchy throats and long days (and nights).  Doing this four weekends in a row of this is a true test of endurance. Continue reading

I was at GenCon judging for UDE. Right now WoW TCG is on life support here in Atlanta (there’s only one group actively playing and it is over an hour away from my house, so it’s very inconvenient for me to get there regularly) and WoW Minis never really got off the ground. But there’s still a core of players here that continue to play Vs. I have folks over to my house a couple times a month to do some drafting of older sets. So, there was a lot of interest from my fellow gamers about the new game coming out. I was able to get some time with Ben Seck, one of the designers of the game and the Brand Manager of the Marvel Superstars line, to demo the game and to ask him some questions about design goals and why some specific decisions were made. I’ll primarily discuss the game and rules first and try to hold off on commentary and discussion of design decisions until later.

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