Back to BASIC

(Wow...two posts today. I am so unmotivated!)

I used to code in BASIC on the Commodore64 back in the 80s and graduated to QBasic later. Keep in mind, this was in grade school/middle school when I was between the ages of 8 and 13 (note that is 20+ years gone by). My friends and I harnessed the power of our computers to write cool little "text-based" (aka choose-your-own-path) games based on our experience with Zork (!!!) and the Choose Your Own Adventure books that we read like they were going out-of-style. [NOTE: Many of the CYOA books were republished in 2000 -- http://www.cyoa.com/ -- so now our kids can read them too!]

My buddy Ryan and I both had Commodore64 machines, Eric had an Apple IIE (his parents were educators). Ryan had saved up enough money to buy a 5 1/4" floppy disk drive, the Apple IIE came with one, and I was stuck recording my games to magnetic cassette on my cassette drive...oh the technology!

Well, I just found out that there is an implentation of a browser-based BASIC called -- NG-BASIC -- that allows you to do the simplest of BASIC functions, like back in the day! I'm going to download this and see if I can remember anything from back in grade school. Too cool!

w00t for Christmas Bonuses!

Well, much to my great surprise, all the hard work that my coding-buddy Skip Lutz and I did on the Life Expectancy project (aka LEFS) has been rewarded with a bonus just in time for Christmas! The total was about half of a normal bi-weekly check for me but after taxes (*sigh*) it weighed in a lot less than that...

Nevertheless, it's extra money at a time of the year when I can definitely use it! Thank God! w00t!

It's Christmastime again

...another year has come and gone, and I am just amazed at all the people that wait till the last minute! This year, I'm (unfortunately) one of them. Because of the show and my schedule in general, I've put off doing a majority of my shopping till this week. Sure, I got a handful of things for the kids and Kels the day after Thanksgiving, but I have a few more gifts to pick up before the official day.

Last night, despite Kelsey feeling ill and me feeling exhausted (the weekend finally caught up with me), we ventured out to the mall in Frisco to try and wrap up some of our Christmas shopping. I found a number of things for Kels, we picked up some additional little items as well as stocking stuffers. I was just amazed at the number of people out there hustling and bustling through the mall. I've got just a few more things to pick up...and then I'll be done!

I'm really excited about this holiday season. Christmas Eve has always been special to my parents (they got married on Christmas Eve, 1969) and I hope to make it as memorable with Kelsey...*wink*

I'm back! */me kisses the ground*

Finally, after nine shows and a heck of a rehearsal schedule, "Sanders Family Christmas" the show was acting & singing in is finally over! Sunday's last show was amazingly awesome with the best crowd of all the shows creating a sense of excitement for those of us in the cast and crew. The show went smashingly...but all good things must come to and end. In this case I am actually thrilled to have my evenings back to spend with Kelsey and Doogan.

I am back! And this week calls for the following tasks to be carried out:

1. Cast party on Monday night (that's tonight!)
2. Finish Christmas shopping. With only a handful of days left I still need to get a couple of things for my kids, Kels and for a few "choice" people...
3. Going-away party on Wednesday for my right winger, Tom Daniels. He's moving back to Colorado. His dad has been in poor health and is getting up there in years, so Tommy's going back to help out with the ranch.
4. Gear up for our Christmas celebration and trip to Florida. We're picking the kiddos up on the 27th and then headed to Kelsey's grandparents home in Palmetto, FL. Should be a fun trip.

I'm finally feeling Christmasy now...and just in time :P

To New Mexico...and beyond!

This morning I was surprised and pleased to see a post on Slashdot about a $225 million project happening in the state of New Mexico driven by Virgin Galactic and it's entrepenuer founder Richard Branson. The project: to build the world's first spaceport that will leverage the SpaceShipOne vehicle (winner of the Ansari X Prize in 2004) for commercial flights as soon as late 2008 or early 2009.

*blink blink*

Will commercial spaceflight be a reality that soon!?!? I'd venture to say yes, if Richard Branson and Burt Rutan are behind it...

Slip-slidin' Away

The first winter "storm" of the season came yesterday -- and with it arrived my first official view of the two types of drivers that inhabit the Dallas/Ft. Worth Metroplex -- I'll get to them in a moment.

First, about the "storm"...this "icy anomaly", which was miniscule on my scale of storms (you have to consider that I've lived in both Minnesota and Illinois before, so this was really not much of a storm), became a big deal because of two primary factors, which will follow with commentary:

• Factor#1 -- Sand v. Salt. In the south, all the roads are made of concrete, which expands and contracts differently than the asphalt commonly used in the northern states. As a result, salt is not used to "de-ice" roadways. Instead, sand -- yes, sand -- is used to "de-ice" and provide traction. It is my contention that this only causes dirty cars and 'road-grit' and actually does little to effect the overall driving conditions of the roadways. *sigh*
  
• Factor #2 -- Idiots. They're everywhere down here...especially when it's raining, snowing or sleeting. I'm not referring to your average, everyday driving fools, but the folks that seem to think that because they're in a 2-ton SUV that they are impervious to the conditions and drive as such. Unfortunately, they couldn't be further from that notion and are more than likely the first to end up in the ditch, smushed into the guardrail or sideswiping your car as they slide across all lanes of traffic when they hit their brakes and the invisible layer of ice beneath their tires...grrrrr.

Nevertheless, I made it to play rehearsal last night although it took me 35 minutes to go 10 miles. Why? Because I was cautious and drove as the conditions called for. And, I made it to work this afternoon (because the office was closed in the morning to wait for a thaw of sorts) just fine...

Living here is different, and it's only December...

Life Less "Hellish"

Last week will be a week that I will someday recall with the reference -- "hell week".

Firstly, work was especially strenuous this week with a roll-out of the next generation of the Life Expectancy Fullfilment System (LEFS) project, for which I'm the secondary developer. In addition to the web-based portion of the project, I wrote a billing application that runs exclusively on a nightly basis to grab orders that are "ready for billing", processes them, dumping them via XML to the Oracle Billing system that we have on the back-end and then updating the LEFS system's database. Well, something broke and thanks to the lack of requirements on the original incarnation of the project -- I had to re-write, re-test and re-do a majority of the billing piece. *sigh* On top of that, I'm working on two other projects -- on rewrite of an older system as well as a stand-alone importer to convert an Access database into a SQL database -- on the fly, updating ump-teen tables in the process.

Secondly, I'm in a musical called Sanders Family Christmas, and we're in the last week of rehearsals before we go into tech week (that starts tonight...*AHHHH!*). I had been struggling with both the libretto and my lines, until this past Thursday. I think I finally have them down, but rehearsals have just been a large chunk of time -- every night from 7pm to 10-10:30pm. Time that I've missed away from Kelsey and life in general. We've got eight shows over the next two weekends...

Thirdly, we [the Plano Ice Dogs] had a heck of a week on our hockey schedule following the Thanksgiving break. Three games in six days. We ended up winning two of three, losing last night to our archrivals -- The Skateful Dead in overtime. It was a nail-biter...and our first loss this session. *grrr*

Oh...and lastly it just happens to be the HOLIDAYS! Gah! I've been taking every opportunity I can to shop (for and with Kelsey) and this weekend was no exception. In fact, Saturday Kelsey and I went shopping after she was off of work and then went to see Pride & Prejudice. What a great movie. It was completely romantic and actually made me melt a little, I must admit.

So...I hope that this week might return to some semblence of normalcy.