God Save the Queen

TACO: [listens to God Save the Queen]

WIFEZILLA: Who is this?

TACO: One of the best punk bands evar.

WIFEZILLA: Green Day?

TACO: ...

WIFEZILLA: My God, that's the most horrible expression I've ever seen.

Highly Inappropriate

So when you're sharing a grown up hug, and you reach The Moment, never, never, NEVER yell out, "WHEEEEEEEEE!"

They don't think it's funny.

At all.

Learn from my mistakes, children. It's too late for me, but there's still hope for you.

They call me Dr. Factoid

KIDZOOKIE: (referring to a Happy Meal toy) He's an insect, right?

TACO: Yep. You know what an insect is, right?

KIDZOOKIE: Yeah, like a bug.

TACO: Well, yeah, some bugs are insects, but not all of them. See, to be an insect...

KIDZOOKIE: Like ants?

TACO: Yeah, like ants. There's a few rules about insects.

KIDZOOKIE: Bugs have rules?

TACO: No, not that kind of rule. Criteria. How you know it's an insect. Insects have six legs...

KIDZOOKIE: Nuh-uh. Spiders don't have six legs.

TACO: Well, spiders aren't insects. They're arachnids. So are ticks and scorpions.

KIDZOOKIE: They're not insects?

TACO: No. Like I was saying, insects have six legs, and a body made of three sections...

KIDZOOKIE: Oh, the head, thorax and... uh... oh, abdomen!

TACO: ... how the crap did you know that?

KIDZOOKIE: I just did.

TACO: Okay, well, anyway, so you see how spiders aren't insects then.

KIDZOOKIE: How about worms?

TACO: What about worms?

KIDZOOKIE: They don't have any legs.

TACO: Well yeah. They're not insects.

KIDZOOKIE: My teacher says they're insects.

TACO: I think you must have misunderstood her.

KIDZOOKIE: No, she says they're insects.

TACO: She probably meant bugs. Some people call them bugs. 'Bug' is an imprecise term that encompasses...

KIDZOOKIE: Okay, Dr. Factoid.

Where There's Smoke...

My wife and kids are out of town right now, visiting with my father-in-law. I've been living the bachelor life for the past week (translation: too much beer, too many video games, too little sex).

My wife called this evening so that I could talk to the kids. My three year old daughter had a lot of questions about the new dog, and I was so caught up in how adorable her excitement over the new pet is that I failed to notice I'd tapped an extra zero in on the microwave.

So I told the microwave to cook my dinner for 30 minutes instead of 3.

I didn't notice this until there was thick, black smoke fucking POURING out of the microwave.

I slapped the microwave off, opened every window in the house, and turned on every fan in the house. I finally pulled the charcoal briquette that remained of my dinner from the microwave and hucked it still smoking into the trash. Amazingly, the fire alarm hasn't gone off. Yet. Perhaps that should concern me.

The smoke outside was already dense enough to make my eyes burn because of a wildfire in the eastern part of the state. At this point, I'll have to go outside into that poison to get some fresh air.

It stinks like death in here. And now it's hotter than hell because I'm not running the AC and cooling the outdoors. Damn it, I turned into my dad.

Fuck you, Eclipse

So I'm running unit tests today, and the stack view in Eclipse is completely crapping out. It's horking error dialogs left and right:




Being a curious sort of guy, I click the details button to find out what the problem is:



Fuck you, Eclipse. Fuck you right in the fucking face.

Checked by my mate

It's not great secret that wifezilla and I don't see eye to eye on design. We've "aggressively negotiated" on the subject many times over the years. Sadly, she lacks my refined sense of style. She has an unfortunate love affair with animal prints, you see.

I've waged a war against animal print in the house since the moment she moved in with me. Actually, the war probably dates back before then, back to when she started spending a significant amount of time at my place.

She frequently declares that when the children move out and she has a room just for her stuff, it will look (and I quote) "like a leopard fucking exploded." Although I haven't managed to keep the place jungle print free, I've done pretty damned well. No inside-out leopards anywhere.

So today, I had an eye exam. I'm generally a cash & carry kind of guy, but for once, I prepared ahead of time. Wifezilla takes care of paying all the bills, being the more fiscally responsible of us, so I hit her up for a blank check to take to the eye doc.

After my exam, I went up to the counter to settle up, unfolded the check to write it out, and got my first look at our joint checks... in all their giraffe-print glory.

I'm pretty sure the receptionist I had to hand that piece of art to thinks I'm gay now.

Smack Talk

Sunday morning, Super Smash Bros. Brawl dropped. We loved Melee on das Gamencuben, so getting the new title for the Wii was a no brainer.

The kids and I dragged our asses out of bed and hauled on down to Target to pick up a copy. Target opens at 8, and I figured we'd be able to get a head start on the Christians going to church. They still had a huge stack of the game when we got there, and I was very proud of my cleverness... until I realized that I'd forgotten the time change, and Target had already been open for an hour when we arrived. I guess I needn't have worried so much.

We've put some miles on the game this week. Wifezilla even plays with us. They've kept the automatic handicap feature from Melee, so within a few fights, even my three year old daughter has a fair shot at winning a fight.

We've had a blast.

My son is six, and he's started to get the hang of the game. The handicap the computer assigns to me dwindles daily, and it's started to get really fun playing against him.

Unfortunately, I talk a lot of trash while I play without even realizing it. Last night, kidzookie was playing against his mom (and winning big time). He'd staked out a position on a ledge, and every time my wife would try to jump onto it, he'd send her flying, point at her, and yell, "Not in my house, little man!"

I couldn't stop laughing. Wifezilla was considerably less impressed.

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.

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

I shaved my head tonight.

I'm not sure why, except that I'm losing my hair anyway and tonight seemed like as good a night as any. So I scalped myself. It feels really good and I don't think that I look appreciably more ridiculous than I did before. Hrrrmmmm.

I lack what they call "social skills."

So yesterday my stomach wasn't doing all that great. Let's just gloss over the details and say that what I did to the bathroom wasn't pretty, and it took three flushes of our industrial grade toilets to undo the damage.

I washed up and left the bathroom. A woman was leaving the women's room at the exact same moment, and she stopped and gave me a look of... well, not horror, exactly. Perhaps concern?

It was an awkward moment, and I lack the social finesse to navigate such treacherous waters. But, I reasoned, I've never seen this woman before, so she must work for the other company on our floor. What's the worst that could happen?

So I did the first thing that popped in my head, which seemed pretty funny at the time:

I held up three fingers and said, "That's right. Three flushes." And I walked off for the breakroom to reload on caffeine.

When I stopped to fish my access badge out of my pocket, she walked past me. As in going the opposite direction of the other company on our floor. I watched until she got to the end of the hallway, scanned her badge, and entered our office space.

Shit.

Heh. Shit. I just caught that.

Oh hell... I'm doing it again.

Their brains are like little sponges.

So I very nearly taught my sweet little daughter the word fuck tonight. Fortunately, I worked harder than I should have this week and managed to turn a simple case of the creeping crud into what now feels suspiciously like bronchitis. The coughing fit that elicited the poetical utterance also rendered it unintelligible.

My daughter now yells, "Ock!" every time something annoys her.