Enjoyed a great Christmas this year. Christmas Eve was spent in recovery, it being the day after the 24: Season 4 marathon. Did end up going out to try to get some last minute stocking stuffers, but after an hour just to get to the mall 15 minutes away and another 20 minutes in the parking lot not finding a spot, we decided to just go to Fred Meyer and load up there.

Of course, that turned into an unintended shopping spree for me. See, I got Jenn some tickets to see Cirque du Soleil (which weren't cheap) and I was going to do the "fewer, more expensive gifts" thing, but Jenn loves quantity (she could open 100 empty boxes and that would just rock) so I thought I'd pick up some smaller things for her stocking so she'd have stuff to open. Like I said, though, that turned into an unintended shopping spree as I found all sorts of neat things I knew she'd like, so I just got them all anyway. Love the credit card.

Christmas morning we went to Jenn's parents' house for breakfast and a little gift exchange. The big one here was a AAA Plus membership for both Jenn and I, which is fantastic, especially because I'm sick to death of changing Jenn's stupid flat tires. She's like a flat tire machine. Now she can call some other poor schmuck to come do it.

After that, we moved on to my parents' house for a late lunch and some more gift exchanging. Stu and Tif joined us there, which was cool since we had so much fun together on Thanksgiving. Played some games, laughed, and generally had a good time.

Some of the things I came out with:

Soul Calibur III

We Love Katamari

Super Mario Sunshine

Nintendo Gamecube Wavebird wireless controller (after a couple of returns/exchanges)

Some bookends that my grandfather brought back from the Philippines when he was over there in WWII (that might not sound cool to you, but there's sentimental value, so it's cool to me)

A crapload of candy

House: Season 1

Lost: Season 1 and the companion guide

One of The Cubes (Joe)

A "Joss Whedon Is My Master Now" t-shirt

A set of Tantrix

Serenity Role Playing Game

In all, a pretty good haul. Lots of stuff to entertain me for a while, and a lot of games to play, so I'd best get cracking on the ones I'm in the middle of.

To that end, I finished up Prince of Persia: Warrior Within on Tuesday. I ended up starting the whole thing over on "Easy" mode because it was too damn difficult on "Normal." I never said I was a master gamer, right? That said, I read a lot of reviews saying how other folks found it pretty difficult, and since I'm in it for the fun of the game and the feeling of success, well... once I got stuck in "Normal" mode, I just figured it'd be better to start over in "Easy." I figure, it's cool to have to fight the boss character three or four times before you get it, but when you're only halfway through the game and fighting the boss for the 15th time doesn't get you through, it needs to be easier.

Having finished that, and having worked through the stuff in Soul Calibur II with Stu, I went on to work on finishing the original Katamari Damacy (that is, collecting the Royal Presents and finishing the levels I hadn't finished yet). What I'm trying to do is finish these prior halfway-done games so I can cleanly move on to the new ones I got without going, "Oh, yeah... I guess I never really finished the first one, huh?" Gotta have that closure.

So during this week while I'm off, that's what I'm doing - finishing games I haven't finished, just taking it easy. Only two bumps in the road.

First, I had planned to have lunch with an old friend of mine a couple days ago, but after waiting for 15 minutes, he never showed up. Got home later that day to find messages on my home phone saying how he was having trouble finding the place (that was at 15 minutes past when he was supposed to be there) and then how he finally found it but I wasn't there (that was at 30 minutes late). Guess we'll have to reschedule, but I was hoping to have lunch with him and meet his new girlfriend. Oh well.

Second, I looked at my work email. Jenn has warned me about doing this and I know better, but I did it anyway. Without going into it, I'll just say this: I hate people who wait until you're on vacation so they can enact poor decisions simply because you're not there to contest them. Folks wonder why I don't go on vacation often, and that's why - two steps forward, one step back. Fan-fucking-tastic.

A couple of Mike's and I was doing a little better. Makes me think drinking at work should be allowed because I might be a little more laid back and easy-going. That said, I don't think I get paid to be laid back... someone has to actively care about what's going on.

Well, the cat's shoving toy mice under the office door, indicating she wants to play, so I'd best go take care of that. (I'm a sucker for that tiny cat. One of the myriad reasons I don't work at home as often as my teammates - distractions!)

Yesterday was the yearly 24 extravaganza, this time a marathon of Season 4. Jenn was there, Dad brought the DVDs, and Stu and Tif came and brought a substantial amount of food. Along with the food Jenn and I brought and a dozen Krispy Kreme donuts contributed by Dad, we had more crappy junk food than five people should consume in a lifetime.

But, you know, that's what it's all about.

Season 4 was about some terrorists trying to wreak havoc on the US nuclear-style, and the only man who can stop them is (of course) Jack Bauer. As always, the entire effort was well put together - acting, effects, story - enough that I really don't know what I would suggest. There was only one loose end that bugged me (what ever happened to Behrooz Araz?) but not enough to make me dislike the season. There are also a couple of really annoying characters ("Chloe O'Brian," who always seems either pouty or smug, and "Edgar Stiles," who has zero self-confidence), but the actors who played them did so perfectly - you hate the characters because the actors make you hate them. Excellent.

I loved the previous seasons we watched marathon-style, and this was no exception. Non-stop action, great characters, and an awesome storyline added up to a 17-hour marathon (from 8:00a Friday to 1:00a Saturday) that went a lot faster than you'd have expected it to. Before we knew it, the show was already over and it was time to go.

Stu, Dad, and I made it through just fine, but the ladies were struggling toward the end. Jenn's eyelids seemed to be getting heavy (and she later commented to me that she was surprised she made it) and Tiff sort of lost the ability to walk or talk coherently.

It rocked, though, and it's the only way to watch that show. The surreal feeling of being immersed in such an exciting world for so long at a single sitting isn't like anything I can explain. Your suspension of disbelief transforms into acceptance that whatever you're seeing is really part of the world and when it's over you wonder what the characters are up to the next day because it'd be nice to get together with them for lunch or something since you've spent so much time with them already. I noticed this during the first marathon we did (Season 2) and it's just amazing every time.

If you haven't seen 24, you're missing out. I can't recommend any particular season since I like all of them, but if you really haven't seen it, start with one of the earlier seasons and work from there. While you don't have to have seen the previous seasons to understand what's going on in later seasons, the long term viewer is rewarded with recurring characters and inside jokes that the newbie isn't going to get.

I look forward to next year's Season 5 marathon. If it's anything like this one was, it's going to be a total blast.

Got home yesterday and noticed that the Roomba, which is normally parked on its Home Base charging, was parked... but not charging.

The Home Base has two lights - one light is for "power" (that is, power to the Home Base) and one is "charging" (which lights up when the Roomba is charging itself). The "power" light was flashing and the "charging" light wasn't on.

Tried docking it a couple of times but Roomba doesn't recognize the Home Base as a valid source of energy anymore. Tried plugging Roomba in directly, but Roomba's own charging light sort of flickers rather than staying on strong.

I think there's something wrong with the power adapter. That's the only thing I can think of. I filed a help question with the iRobot support people and we'll see how that goes. I don't want to buy another power brick. Those damn things are like $50.

After futzing with the Roomba, I went in to see what Jenn was up to. She was watching television, but for some reason had the VCR on... huh?

Oh, I see - that's because the digital cable box died. Great. The display on it goes black then flashes "88:88" and goes black again. No signal coming through. Unreal.

I'd blame a power surge, but the cable box was plugged into a surge protector and no other components plugged into that protector were affected (thank God - my TV's on that one). Maybe just a bad electronic coincidence. Regardless, Jenn will take the cable box in and get it swapped for a new one, and I'll have to wait and see what iRobot says about the power adapter.

Serenity came out on DVD yesterday. If you haven't gotten your copy yet, why not?

I got mine, but only after a bit of a struggle. I went to Target at lunch and they had already sold out. Granted, they were selling it for $16.99, which is a pretty good deal on a new movie, so I can't argue it. Plus, it was an awesome movie, so I'm glad to see it went well... but that doesn't get a copy in my grubby little hands, does it?

Luckily Jenn went to Costco and was able to pick up a copy there for $18.99. That's fine; I'll eat the $2. That bad boy's getting watched this weekend.

Pretty rockin' weekend this weekend. Both days I got up at like 7:00a (just couldn't sleep anymore... for some reason I can't really "sleep in" like I used to) and played Prince of Persia: Warrior Within until 10:00a or whenever I felt that it was time to take a shower.

On Saturday Jenn and I went to the comic store and then were going to follow that up with a trip to the mall to pick up stocking stuffers when we got caught in probably the worst traffic I've ever seen. I had to get off the freeway and take back roads for like an hour to get the five miles or whatever ridiculous short distance it was from us to the mall, then proceeded to sit for another half hour just getting into the parking lot, at which point we decided to skip the whole thing and go home. Another 45 minutes or so and we had escaped the clutches of holiday capitalism.

Oh, we did stop at Target, though, and we picked up a couple of those buckets of frozen drink mix you can get. They had "Frosty Eggnog" and "Mint Chocolatini" that both sounded good. A quick trip to the liquor store had those setting up in the freezer outside.

Saturday night didn't really do much anything. Watched some TV. That's about it.

Sunday, after my round of gaming I went outside to put the protective cover up on the awning. Good thing, too, because it got snowy and did a little freezing rain action - don't need that gumming up the works.

Finished that up and after a ridiculously long wait for the cable guy to show up and fix Stu's cable modem, Stu and Tiff came over. We went to Qdoba for lunch, then came back and while Jenn and Tiff made sugar cookies Stu and I played Soul Calibur 2 and Mario Golf: Toadstool Tour (where Stu got an awesome +28 score in a single round of golf - harsh). The SC2 was a lot of fun - we played the "Weapons Master" mode and finished it the first round through (once you do that you unlock all these "extra missions" that we didn't want to get into at the time). It validated my belief that enough strategic button mashing can, in fact, make you successful. Plus, it makes me want to get the new Soul Calibur 3.

We busted out the frozen drink buckets to try them out. Both are really good, though most of us happened to go for the "Frosty Eggnog." (Don't worry, Mint Chocolatini, I have not forgotten you!)

Woke up this morning and noticed that the kitties hadn't eaten much food, so I didn't need to add any new to their bowls. Walked downstairs to find one of the plates of sugar cookies totally uncovered and one cookie in several pieces on the floor. Asked Jenn about it and she said she had trouble keeping the Tiny Cat out of the cookies while she was making them... turns out those cookies, covered or not, were not safe from the ravages of that little turd. Cleaned up the cookie bits, put the remaining cookies away, and now... work.

I have only Monday through Wednesday to work this week, though, and Friday everyone's coming over for the 24: Season Four marathon at my house, which I'm totally looking forward to. Christmas spirit, here I come!

This is more for the folks involved in this debacle, but I'm going to just put it out there. Those who know what I'm talking about, great. Those that don't, sorry.

A while ago, one member of my family ("Family Member A") said something to another member ("Family Member B"). There were actually a lot of "somethings" said, and it has caused a rift in the family continuity.

Whether Member A was justified or not in saying those things is between Member A and Member B to work out. I have my feelings on the matter, but they don't have anything to do with it. To both of them (and the rest of the family), know this now:

I will not have this ridiculous awkwardness at my wedding.

If this shit is not figured out and addressed by the time Jenn and I send out invitations, not everyone will be invited. And I will not regret that decision.

That is all.

In general daily life, I find that I run across two kinds of people: those who think before they act, and those that act before they think. The folks who think before they act (henceforth "thinkers") seem to be easier to deal with than the folks who act first ("actors"). I appreciate the thinkers. I have a problem with the actors.

The actors never seem to realize that you can't always necessarily fix bad action with more action. Quantity doesn't make up for quality.

Let's apply this to development. Say you're writing some business logic with an API that will be consumed by other developers. Even if it's simple logic, stop and think: If you were the consumer of the API, what would you like out of it? Is it robust enough to support all the cases it's going to need to? (Did you ask your potential consumers to verify that?) What about doc? Consistency of naming and usage across methods and classes? Don't make it so that some methods return true on success and others return false...

Or how about defect fixing: The actor will start coding before figuring out all the ramifications of what they're doing, then realize that the fix they just made actually breaks three more things. The thinker will follow the related code paths through and apply a more correct fix.

Sounds common sense, right? You'd be surprised.

Got a question on how something in a standard framework (.NET, Java, etc.) works? Stop and think! Dropping your laptop on a coworker's desk and interrupting them with a question or five isn't always the best way to go. You could try searching Google - chances are you'll find what you're looking for. Are there docs you could look at? It might take a little more time, but maybe you'll learn something along the way... and the stuff you learn will probably help you out in the future (and save your coworkers some time).

Now, I'm not saying that people shouldn't help other people. I'm all for everyone carrying their own weight toward a common goal, and if sometimes folks need a little help, that's fine. What I'm saying is... help shouldn't always be the first resort. Try to figure it out. Stop and think for a second. Still can't get it? Stop and think just a little longer - this is the part most folks miss. Your first failure does not necessarily equal "blocked." If you still can't get it after puzzling on it for a while and you've exhausted the standard methods of helping yourself (doc, search, etc.), then ask for help. Folks will be much happier to help you if you have already researched the topic yourself and legitimately came up dead-ended.

Building something with weak requirements? Stop and think! If you don't know what you're building, you can't build it. Even in an Agile environment you have to have some sort of direction before coding. Too many times people code before planning. I'm sure you've seen it - spaghetti code that makes absolutely no sense, grown in upon itself without hope of ever being untangled. Stop! Think!

Got a small feature that needs to be added? Don't just tack code on the side. Refactor your code if you have to. Test it! Especially in the case of an API, you can't just throw some code in there without testing it - frequent releases of your API to fix bugs that appeared because you didn't test your new feature not only causes churn in consuming products but also makes people lose confidence in the API.

Yeah, that was more of a rant than anything else, but I'm really tired of actors. At the store, at the sandwich shop, in the tech world... come on, people. Stop and think. I promise I won't dock you for taking a couple extra seconds to get it right the first time.

Saturday was spent in Woodland, WA, touring the Empress Palace, a location that Jenn and I ended up reserving for our wedding.

It's a beautiful place, currently decorated for the holiday season, and, frankly, we couldn't beat the price for what we got. Paying up front got us a 10% discount, and Jenn won a drawing for another $500 off.

The date's set for October 14, 2006. I'm sure we'll have plenty to fill our time between now and then, but at least the venue (for both the ceremony and reception) is settled.

Went with Stu and Tif to see Aeon Flux this weekend.

Now, I'm a fan of the cartoon. I admit I came in thinking (hoping) that they'd stay faithful to it and reproduce the coolness (and oddness) that the cartoon renders.

I was disappointed.

It's not that Charlize Theron did a bad job - she didn't. She was pretty good as Aeon. It wasn't that the premise was bad - it wasn't. They came up with a reasonable plot with respect to the cartoon. It wasn't even bad effects - they worked in the cool gadgets and some of the more odd things the cartoon had to offer tech-wise.

It's just that... well, it's like they said when they were making the thing, "Hey, we can be 100% faithful to the cartoon with this movie, except where we can't be totally faithful. Then... aw, fuck it. Half-ass the thing and call it a day."

The cartoon felt rich and intriguing. The movie felt sort of hollow. I didn't feel for any of the characters. I didn't get to like them. I didn't care why they were doing what they were doing. It very much felt like it was just going through the motions.

If you see it, do it on a rental. I might even wait until it's off the new release wall at the video store and pay your buck. You'd do better, though, to pick up the cartoon and watch Aeon in her full glory and pretend the live action version just never happened.

I added a new category to the blog - Release Notices - so folks looking to see when new versions of my software are released can look in that category to see the history of all the releases. The Software/Downloads category still provides the list of all available downloadables.

The new version is out and is primarily a bug fix release - hopefully some alleviation of problems for the VS 2005 users.

Fixed bug that would cause VS 2005 to throw an exception on shutdown if the CR_Documentor window had been displayed during the session.

Fixed bug that would display a security warning in the CR_Documentor window for VS 2005 users. CR_Documentor now executes the preview in the "Local Intranet" security zone.

Go get it!

Big thanks to Max and the rest of the DevExpress support team for being so responsive and pointing me in the direction for the exception-on-shutdown bug as well as for testing it out for me to make sure it was fixed. Also thanks to Scott Grosch and Chuck McGavern for reporting the bugs and helping test - if folks don't tell me something's wrong, I can't fix it!

There are lots of things getting done lately, and I'm enjoying the closure I'm getting on them so much that I think my creative juices are flowing again - enough that working on new little side projects may be an option.

Friday night I got the last of my Odyssey CD storage cases from Sleeve City and finished the consolidation of CDs from the several racks and bookshelves they previously took up into three of these metal beauties. You wouldn't imagine how much space I'm saving just on CDs.

Saturday Stu moved to the west side (not far from my house, actually) I spent the day helping him load and unload the U-Haul. Aside from being pretty exhausting (and causing me to be sore and achey even today), it was good to get all that done and I think it will be conducive to much gaming in the coming times. I'm itchin' to get my Soul Calibur on.

Saturday night after moving, we watched Mr. and Mrs. Smith, which I anticipated being the lamest thing ever but was actually quite entertaining. Good humor and good action, just generally lots of fun. Deep and meaningful? No, but that's not what we were looking for, either. Just a lot of fun.

Sunday was going to be a sort of "take it easy" day and was looking like it would stay that way despite some minor chores in the morning, but Jenn wanted to get the Christmas tree out of the attic, so that created... a little tension. But I got it put up and, a reasonable amount of grumbling and profanity aside, it all came together okay.

Woke up this morning at 4:30a and couldn't go back to sleep, so at 5:00a I got up to read. Reading this book Sisters of the Raven by Barbara Hambly. It's pretty decent, though it's not one of those "can't put it down" reads. I'm liking it, though, so I got up and spent an hour reading with the cat before the alarm went off.

Anyway, like I said - the juices are starting to flow again, which hasn't happened for quite some time (the project we were on about this time last year and into the beginning of this year was, shall we say, trying) and I'm thinking about little projects and stuff to work on. I'm working on a minor bug in CR_Documentor, and I think maybe there's some stuff I'd like to add to Junction Shell Extensions. I also want to get Solvent working in VS 2005. Oh, and I want better blog software (that's been in the works for a while now) so it might be time to buckle down and get going on that. Plus the game bug has bitten me and I'd like to get back into the gaming thing. So much to do, so little time.

The new version is out and provides the ability to actually include documentation in the preview using the <include /> tag.

Go get it!

There have been a lot of overly excited people in the Portland, Oregon area because it's getting cold enough to get some snow.

I hate snow.

"Why," you might ask, "would you hate such a wonderful cold-weather miracle as the beautiful new-fallen snow?"

First, I'm not an outdoor person. I don't like being cold. I don't like being wet. Snow is both. No fun.

Second, I'm not in grade school anymore. Snow does not somehow mean I get the day off. Even if it's so snowy and icy that my garage door is frozen shut and I can't possibly make it in to the office, I get to work at home (or I can take unpaid leave - thank you, no - or call in sick and waste a PTO day - again, no thanks). So snow doesn't mean "get out of work free."

Beyond that, though, the problem I have with snow is the driving. I, personally, have no issue driving in snow. I haven't had to do it much, admittedly, but when there's snow to drive in, I haven't had much problem. My car doesn't swerve out of control or slide across three lanes of traffic. The problem with the driving is the other drivers. This is Oregon, right? Rainy country? People in Oregon, surprisingly, have no idea how to drive in the rain. "Holy crap, it's raining, slam on the brakes!" If they can't drive in the rain, what do you think snow does?

Common sense goes out the window. The idea that you can't stop while going uphill because you'll never get started again doesn't occur to half the people. The other half drive as though it's perfectly dry conditions, going 70mph in the 55mph zone, and then wonder why they don't come out of the turn in the same lane they started the turn in. There's no concept of moderation while driving - there are only two speeds: fast and stop. No "taking it easy" because "taking it easy" ends up equating with "stop."

Oh, and don't get me started on the people with studded tires. Unless you live in a waaaay rural area, you don't need studs, folks. Seriously. I've never owned a pair of studded tires in Oregon and have never needed to. Driving around with studs on when it's a perfectly dry day or only rain (and that's all that's in the forecast)? Well, thanks to those folks for chewing up the road and unnecessarily wasting my tax dollars on road repair. Oh, and special thanks to the ones who drop studs from the tires because of the dry road conditions and later have those studs thrown up to ding my car or crack my windshield. I totally appreciate it.

Anyway, point being, snow = bad. You may now return to your regularly scheduled program.