I renounce my humanity.

I don't want to be associated with you fuckers any more.

I'm flipping through the channels tonight, and I see some lady missing and presumed dead, body parts found on the side of some highway, and a 3 month old infant found dead and probably tossed out of a car.

What the fuck, people?

I'm one of the most disagreeable sons of bitches you're likely to find anywhere. I don't like people at all. And I still can't imagine doing any of this shit.

What the fuck is wrong with people?

I don't want you fuckers messing up my rep anymore. I quit.

Mental Masturbation

That's my favorite thing to call it.

I write software. No big surprise there. Both of you that actually read this know that.

I really just want to be left alone to write good software. Again, no big surprise.

Management isn't so into that, because management isn't really into good software. They're more into preening for the guys above them in the pecking order.

Anyone surprised yet? I didn't think so.

So we have this system set up where people testing and using our software can report bugs in it. It goes through this whole process and eventually get assigned to the programmer best suited to fixing the problem. In theory, anyway.

Frequently, as we're working, we'll find bugs in our own code... and if we're busy with something else and don't have time to work on it right then (which is, of course, usually the case), we'll log a bug against it just to make sure it doesn't get lost. Sue us. We actually like developing software and give a flying fuck. Call us young and idealistic. I'm pretty sure the correct term is "dumbass." So I'll take it as flattery.

Corporate mandate says that the person who files the bug has to fix it... but what do you do when you file a bug that you have to fix? We have a whole QA group for this shit, right?

Wrong. The filer verifies it.

To hell with the fact that the person who fixes the bug is inherently unqualified to verify that the functionality is correct. I mean, I wrote the fix, so obviously, I'm going to bitchslap the fix and say it's insufficient, right? And forget the fact that I'm not really capable of getting outside my own head and using it in ways I didn't anticipate.

That's not important, right?

Nah.

So today I spent the whole fucking day... the whole fucking day... verifying several dozen... DOZEN... bugs I had filed against myself and fixed.

And I actually went through them and tested them, because despite the fact that it's stupid, I give a greasy rat's ass. And I even reopened two of them because of that whole rat's ass thing.

But come on... I'm an aberration. Is it really smart to count on all your devs being as fucking stupid as me?

Dear managementards: Laziness rules. I hate to inform you.

God.

The Wisdom of Kidzookie

On the drive back home tonight, kidzookie pipes up and asks his mom:

"Hey mom... why don't you have a brother? Is it because grandma and grandpa don't have sex any more?"

The Wang Whisperer

I recently switched over to a Mac laptop as my main computer at home, and I'm still experimenting with all the software options available to me on the new platform. I found a pretty serviceable chat program in Adium almost immediately and have been most pleased with it.

Last night, while digging through the applications folder for Shit I Haven't Tried Out Yet (TM), I found that the computer came with chat software already installed. Huh. Reasoning that anything so blessed by Apple must be very nicely integrated with the system, I decided to try it out.

It works well, but I wasn't able to get it to connect to everything I wanted all at the same time. I generally stay logged into AIM, ICQ, and GoogleTalk because there's people I chat with frequently on all three. It looks like I can do that with iChat, but I haven't figured out how yet. Still getting used to the way Mac does things.

Like most of the software I've fiddled with on OSX, it's very pretty, and adds nice little touches that make using it more intuitive and pleasant.

It decorates the chats so that what you and your chat partner type come up in word balloons (a la comic strips) in the chat window, making it look for all the world like your icons are talking to each other. You can turn this off, but I got a kick out of it and left it on.

Then Coyote logged on and I pounced on the not-nearly-often-enough opportunity to talk to him. And all hell broke loose.

You see, Coyote's icon is always a golden wang.

And last night, the golden wang talked to me, man.

It was... surreal.

Conversations From the Back Seat

Excerpts from conversations between my son and daughter, overheard tonight:

Conversation the first:

SON: Don't marry me when you get older. The baby would be really sickly.

Conversation the second:

SON: If you are gay when you grow up, you can marry a woman.

DAUGHTER: I don't wanna be gay.

SON: But if you're gay, you can marry a woman.

DAUGHTER: I don't wanna be gay. I wanna be a princess.

Party at Taco's House

So my father in law came up for his every-third-week chemo last night. Today was the appointment. They checked him out and declared that he no longer requires the chemo treatments. No word yet on whether he'll have to undergo the radiation treatment at the end. I think we find that out tomorrow.

Pants off dance off at Taco's house. Yay!

Karma karma karma karma karma...

...chameleon...

You come and go...

You come and gooo-oooo-ooo-ooo...





Yeah, I don't know, either.

Also...

...blah, blah, fucking blah. You know who you are. Shut up.

Breakdown (Let Me Hear It, Now)

Rock Band hit back in November. I resisted. Lord, how I resisted. I have Guitar Hero 3. I am immune.

One of my coworkers picked it up this week. We discussed the game at great length yesterday. The more he talked about it, the more awesome it sounded.

I needed this fucking game.

Fortunately for my immortal soul and for my marriage, John described in great detail just how hard it is to get Rock Band in San Francisco. He had to comb the city for it. When he finally found it online, he ordered it and arranged for an in-store pickup. It sells out there the second it hits the shelves, even after a couple of months. Think Wii, only not a childhood euphemism for micturation.

Hooray, thinks I, I'm still immune... for, though I have caved after lo, these many months of wanting an X-box 360, and lo, these two months of wanting Rock Band, the game is in scarce supply. I can't have it.

I hit Best Buy on my way home from work yesterday. It would seem that we on the east coast do not suffer from the San Franciscan hard rock drought. You know how sometimes gas stations will build elaborate structures out of soda can cases? Best Buy had built what approximated a 17th century well out of Rock Band cases. The display came up to my chest.

Of course, they were out of 360s.

As was everyone else in Wake County. Evidently, Raleigh is anti-San Francisco. If there was ever an earthquake that rocked the San Andreas hard enough to cause the two to touch, I'm quite certain the earth would be destroyed in the resultant explosion and outpouring of energy. God help us all.

Three hours of store-hopping later, I found one at Target. Score! I paged the guys covering the section, and one of them showed up, unlocked the console, and carried it over to the register...

...where he discovered it had already been opened. Target's policy is apparently to return opened consoles as defective and recover the cost, so they don't sell them once they've been opened and returned. And I didn't really want to pay retail for a used system. They checked the online inventory, but no Target within reasonable driving distance had one.

Fortunately, I had kidzookie with me, and kiddo was looking extremely sad over the prospect of not getting the only fucking 360 to be found within 50 miles. No sooner had I explained to the Target guy that I understood, he'd been more helpful than anyone I'd talked to so far that night (especially the gotard at GameSpot who couldn't even fucking tell me whether they had any 360s in stock), and thanks for your time, than he asked me to hang on and paged his manager.

Manager lady showed up, and electronics kid told her my sob story. She got a load of my sad, sad little boy who was bravely accepting the loss of the 360, and offered to sell it to me against store policy at a 20% discount.

I love Target.

So I got the mid-range X-box 360 pro with Marvel Ultimate Alliance and Forza for the price of the crummy Arcade Edition.

The reviews for Ultimate Alliance paint it as a mediocre game. That's about right. It's fun, but not great... but fucking sweet for a free game

Forza is awesome... think Gran Turismo, except they actually model damage and actually let you paint your fucking car.

And then I stopped for Rock Band on my way home.

God Damn.

Rock Band may very well own my immortal soul. It was developed by the original Guitar Hero guys. It's fan-fucking-tastic.

1. The guitar. It feels cheap compared to the Guitar Hero controller. It's flimsier, made of thinner plastic. It's got more controls, but it feels cheaper. I'm not in love, but it's serviceable... it works well, it just feels cheap. Mad Catz is supposed to release a controller for it eventually, so I'll look into that when it comes out.
2. The microphone. It's well-made. It's heavy. I don't know if they weighted it to make it feel more substantial or what, but it feels like a solid piece of equipment. I sang (badly) into it for a while last night. It works well. On easy mode, the vocal tracks are very forgiving and easy to pass. I hear they're pretty fucking tough at high levels. We'll see as we get there... maybe I can lure wifezilla into the game with the mike. You can use more or less any headset/mike combo with the game as well, so I'll try to sell it as a song & choreography combo a la her favorite performers.
3. The drums. Jeebus. These things are the shit. They're really solid. Good aluminum struts, solid drum pads... the thing feels really solid. I played the drums for hours last night. I'm not good at drums, but fuck they're fun. Plus I get to hit shit.

I'm on my second evening with the 360 and Rock Band now. Well into the point where buyer's remorse usually sets in... except instead of the usual taste of stale beer and sadness, it's OMGWHYAMINOTPLAYINGROCKBANDRIGHTFUCKINGNOW?

OMG.

SRSLY.

The Danger of Wishes

Lately, we've had a lot of trouble getting my son to stay in bed after bedtime. He comes downstairs over and over again, wanting hugs, wanting to ask questions, wanting to know what some noise was, you name it. We've established a firm rule that you have to keep your scrawny little ass in bed after you're tucked in, and no yelling downstairs to us, or you get no hugs, no second tuck-ins, nothing.

It doesn't do shit, of course, but we have the rule.

So last night, he's up over and over again, and I'm getting pissed. "I heard a noise upstairs, is the computer off?" (That's been a popular one, lately)

I log in remotely to the machine upstairs and check the volume. Nope, I had forgotten to mute it. I mute it remotely. "There ya go, kiddo, get back upstairs."

Two minutes later, he's back downstairs. "I heard a noise. Are you sure it's off?"

"Yes, I'm sure."

"Can you turn it off again?"

I'll check again. "Yep, it's off."

"But I heard something."

"The dishwasher's on. The washing machine's on. The dryer's on. You probably heard something from one of those. Or one of the cats moving around the house. Or maybe the wind blew one of the trees against the house. There's absolutely nothing to be worried about. Now get. Your. Butt. Upstairs."

"But..."

"Get upstairs now, and don't come down again, or you're going to be in a lot of trouble."

Tears. Snot. The works. I haven't even raised my voice at this point, so I don't understand this reaction at all. My wife goes upstairs with him to tuck him in and play good cop to my bad cop. She comes downstairs about five minutes later, smirking and suppressing giggles.

Turns out, the root of the matter was this: he had been curious to know whether wishes worked, so on the playground at school that day, he'd tested it by wishing on a dandelion that monsters were real. Every bump and thump that night sent the kid into hysterics.

My life, ladies and gentlemen.

/bow

Why aren't you listening?

Fuck you! I don't want to wear the tutu!

I mean, uh, yeah. Manly shit. And stuff.

I bought the last Beth Hart album I was lacking tonight. Why the fuck aren't you listening to her?

1. It's an awesome blend of blues & rock. Which is fucking awesome, since rock owes its life to blues and country already, even though nobody remembers that.
2. She's Janis reincarnated, motherfucker. Yeah, she was born two years after Janis died. She deserved a vacation. Bitch.
3. She covered Whole Lotta Love. I licked the screen but I'm pretty sure that isn't transmissible.
4. She toured with Jeff Beck. Seriously. God damn.
5. She's fucking hot. Srlsly.

Why the fuck aren't you listening to her? That's it. I'm not speaking to you any more.

Okay, I am. But only because the sex is great.

Happy New Years, Motherfuckers.

That's really about all I've got. So, er, have a happy new year. And shit. Yeah.