Wedding

I got married on July 19th. It was an amazing day. Just about everyone made it. We didn't have a drop of rain and barely a breeze. It was overcast so it wasn't unberably hot. The dog didn't bark and the birds were quiet for a change. No body got overly carried away. Basically it went off without a hitch. But now I think I'm suffering from PPD. I sit at home and have nothing to plan, nothing to make, no one to call about things, no ideas to look for, nothing to decorate. All that is left is a mess to clean up. It's kinda depressing. I also have various regrets popping into my head now. I forgot to put the fake rose petals on the aisle. I didn't hug my dad at the end of the aisle (that really bothers me). I should have gotten a better tan (it looks like I have a serious farmers tan in the pictures). I should have worked out more 'cause I kinda look like a tent (white and strapless just do not work for me!). I should have danced with my new husband whether we had an "official dance" or not. I should have made an announcement about the fireworks we had after because maybe more people would have stayed for them. There are a few pictures I wanted the photographers to take that I forgot about. I don't think everyone got a tour of the house. And the list kinda goes on and on. And there really isn't anything I can do. It's over and it won't ever happen again and that's just the way it is. That was my day and now it's over so I should just be happy I ever got it at all 'cause some people never do. God I'm getting soft in my old age! Imagine what I'll be like at 35!

Graveyard

We were out for a tour a while ago and found a church and a graveyard in the middle of nowhere. I don't know why but old graveyards and stuff seem so interesting. It's kinda fun to check out the dates and names and think about what happened and what their lives were like. Must have been a settlement years ago.
The newest tombstone said 1999 but the oldest was 1913. Although there were others that had no dates on them. Half of them were not in English. The consensus seems to be that it's Ukrainian which makes sense because the area is full of French and Ukrainian people.
One thing that we noticed was that there were lots of children and babies buried there. I assume that would be relatively common 100 years ago. There was one where the mom died the day after the baby was born, the baby died three years later, and then the dad died right after that. The other son only lived to 34. Craziness.

The family name on this one "Sopotyk" is the name of a road out here. Guess they were an important family.
We tried Googling the name of the church but it did not really find anything. There is no real signs of a settlement here either. A couple old farm sites but nothing else really. Although I guess all the land around here is either thick bush or farm land now. It's kinda too bad, it would be cool to know. I guess I could find out who takes care of the place (the lawn is mowed) and ask them. It's probably the RM. Or maybe it's better to just keep it a mystery!

Sunsets

We found this nice little trail the other day. Looked like a nice trail so we followed it. It went on for a fair ways. You could only see maybe 5 feet into the bush and that was it. It was cool. Imagine finding a trail like this in the middle of the prairie. Lucky us!

It led out to a horse pasture but also to the top of a hill with a great view.

I can see my house from here! But only when I use the zoom :o)



We saw people riding their horses around inside the fence line. This would be beautiful country for horse riding. Someday we'll be able to join them.

Around the country side

We went for a tour the other day and saw some wildlife. Well, only a porcupine, some ducks and birds, and some moose. There were three moose. I think that the one was probably a year or two old and the other two looked like this year, and relatively new too.

I only got a picture of the porcupine butt though.


Can you see the babies? (you can only see one of the babies in the pictures because the other did not stand up) I wonder where the mom is ?


The one baby did stand up to be counted!


I kinda wish we would have seen the mom but on the other hand, I'm kinda glad she wasn't around. She had her kids in a good spot though. They were basically on an island surrounded by thick bush and water. We hadn't seen any moose around since last year. It's nice to know they are still around. Now if the bald eagles would come back, we'd be set!

Yard Work

I like spring. I'm not going to say I love it because it is a lot of work and is very busy, but I like it. Finally got all the lawn mowed. That only took 9 hours over 4 days. Now the first part that I mowed is ready to be done again. Oh well, it's good exercise. Now if I can just get all the weeds out of my flower bed it would all be good. Just as soon as I finish I have to go back to the beginning and start all over. Especially with the dandelions. Darn things. But I finally have some flowers starting to bloom and they are so beautiful it makes it all worth while.

Plus I get to spend time outside and my cat really enjoys helping with the flower beds (actually, she just likes to lay next to me and watch me work!).


Still lots to do before July! Now if the weather would just smarten up! Painting in the rain just does not work very well.

Getting Real

I just finished reading "Getting Real - The smarter, faster, easier way to build a successful web application" by 37signals. It was a pretty good book. I'm pretty sure I have read it before. But that's okay because it has a lot of good ideas in it. After I was finished, I just wanted to get on my computer and write something, but I was in a vehicle 30 minutes from home on my way to work so that didn't happen. And when I got to work I was like "okay, time to get real" but most of their ideas won't really work here because they are aimed more towards online projects and start-ups. Our software has been around for a few years already so we don't have to worry about start-up stuff anymore and it's not online and we do allow customers to get customized changes and we have meetings every morning. I would still like to try to start something at home but I have no ideas. I don't think I'm interested in doing anything really serious right now either. Books are always like "find a need and fill it". But I don't really want to unless it's the need for a game. But pretty much every game under the sun has been done already. Plus, I would have to get online and learn something like Ruby on Rails or something. Or I could just do something for fun again like the trucking monopoly game. That turned out alright. I still play it at home (and I don't even win all the time). I'm kinda trying to plan a wedding for the summer so learning a new language right now might just take up too much time. Maybe in the fall. But I almost need a laptop or something because my other half likes to be on the computer in the evening to play his games. Oh well, back to the work that pays my bills!

Bad Things Don't Come In Threes

I feel like I am doomed to live my life sitting in hospitals while people I love are sick and sitting at funerals when those I love die. It's pretty much been 7 months of hospitals and funerals. What's even the point of being here if everyone just gets sick and/or dies. And that's just the people I know. There's a whole world of sickness and death. And those that are not sick or dieing are shooting each other and blowing each other up in pointless wars. My grandpa, my godson, my sister, my great aunt, and now my dog. I mean, really, how much are we supposed to just sit around and take. I guess all you can do is just suck it up, have a drink, and wait for what will come next. At least I still have my job!

Moved

Well, we are now moved. Moving is always an interesting adventure. First you have to pack up all the crap you've accumulated over the years (6 years for us). You also have to decide what crap you actually want to pack and what you could not care less about. We probably had three truck loads of garbage. I don't understand where it all comes from. It's not like our old place was a total trash hole and it really wasn't that big so I'm not quite sure how soo much garbage was hiding in it. Oh well, it's gone now. Then you get to load everything up (for those of you lucky enough to have movers come in and do this all for you, I am most envious). We used a stock trailer. We were like "This thing is almost bigger then the trailer, I'm sure everything will fit in it". Of course, we were wrong. We stuffed as much as we could in that and the car and there was still more. How on earth did we get so much stuff! And we didn't even take the couch, fridge, or stove. My god, we have enough towels for all of Canada! Why? I have absolutely no idea. Then you make the long drive to the new house and unpack all the crap you decided not to throw away. Then you have to find a place for all of it. I'm pretty sure I've moved the mess around the house about 6 times now. It's finally all in the basement so at least I don't have to look at it. I figure things will get put away as they are used. And now we have at least twice as much space as we did before. I guess we had better buy some more crap to fill it up!

Facebook

Facebook is something that I'm sure everyone has heard of by now. I had received a few invitations to join and eventually gave in just to see what it was all about. Of course I am now hooked. It is actually pretty cool. They put a bunch of extra crap in there like different applications you can add to your page (i.e. Pirates, movie ratings, zombies, horoscopes, fortune cookies, pets, etc.) which is really pretty useless. The cool part is how many people are actually using it. I have found people I haven't seen in 16 years. That, to me, it pretty amazing. I guess the downside would be that people can also find you, whether you want them to or not. I find it very convenient for sharing photos. It is very easy to upload and add comments to pictures. They also have this option where you can select a region containing someones face and name it and if they are on Facebook too you can link it to their profile. I guess the messaging part is basically just like email. You have an inbox where you get messages but you can also post messages on other people's (or your own) "wall". All of the people who are in that profiles "Friends" list can then see that message. Nice for getting a public message out to all your friends (not that you can't do that with email too). To me it seems a little more personal then email. Maybe it's because it feels more like real-time then email because of the way the message board is setup. All in all, to me, it seems like a great way to make the world a little smaller.

Excited to Move

We finally get to move. It's so very exciting, nerve racking, scary, and exhausting. There is so much to do. I can hardly believe it has been almost 6 years already since the last time I moved. How time flies by.

Kaiser

Since it seems like I will be sufferring a lack of inspiration for an indefinite period of time, I have started a Kaiser game. I need to practice figuring out logic and stuff anyway. This time, to try to get the logic somewhat correct for the computer players, I am writing tests for things I need the code to be able to do and then writing the code to do it. I know this is how you are supposed to code anyway but the City Builder project ended up with the majority of the code in a controller and could not be easily tested (not that that's an excuse, but since it was just for me I kinda slacked). This time I'm trying to keep the code isolated in a class and independent of variables in the controller. That will make it easier to write tests and it will make it easier to change the interface without losing all the code if I should need/want to later. I'm kinda trying to concentrate on getting the code I need to make it functional first and then I can concentrate on the user interface. See if I can't get some good enough graphics to appeal to some of the more seasoned players.

Searching for Inspiration

I wrote a game. It's like monopoly. It was fun. And good practice for work since it was in the same language as what we use to write our product. Plus, it was fun. I was going to rewrite it in something that would allow online play but as I thought about it more, it probably wasn't going to happen anyway for many various reasons. So now I want to do something new. The problem is what to do. I've been reading 'chris crawford on game design' and the last bit is all about games he has developed and how he went about the logic and stuff. He has a lot of good ideas about how to design the gameplay first and the interface later and that kind of thing. So now I know a better way to go about designing a game I just don't have a game to design.

Where do you find a good idea? I don't even care if it's a new idea or not, I just want a good idea. I was thinking Kaiser because that's something that I want to play and can't find, but it's kinda a boring idea. I suppose it would keep me occupied for a while anyway. That would be a cool game online, but when you only have dial-up, it's hard to develop and maintain an online game. Plus you have to find a place to host it and get a domain name and all that crap.

Are games like stories? Do you write what you know? Obviously everything I know has already been done otherwise I wouldn't know it. Plus, I'm not a 3D graphics expert or video expert or anything like the designers who create todays computer and console games so anything I know is way out of my league anyway. I could take an existing idea and make it into something in my league like I did with the monopoly idea but then no one would want to play it, like the monopoly game.

I guess that's why I write trucking and accounting software and not games. Don't need a lot of creativity to figure out what gl accounts to use or how many reference fields to have on an order.

Tablets

So I got a tablet from work and it is awsome. I don't know why more people wouldn't be using these. The one I got came with a pen and a mouse. The pen is so cool. And so easy to use once you get used to it. You would think that would be the more logical move from paper to computer. I find it more comfortable to use. I also really like that you plug the tablet in and everything is powered off it. There are absolutely no batteries to replace. It's also nice that you can still have your regular mouse plugged in, especially if there are other people using the computer who might not be so thrilled about the tablet.

I have tried it out a bit doing some minor photo editing (removing red eye and cleaning up scratches and fuzzy spots) and it works really well. I like the preasure sensitivity feature.

GIMP is Grrrrrreeeaaatt!

I've been using GIMP for a while now but I never really read anything on how it works. I just sort of played around until I figured out what I was trying to do. I've always wanted to learn more about it because I know it can do a million amazing things it you just learn how. So I started reading a How To book on it. I'm only through the chapter on drawing (I think it's the third) and I'm pretty sure I've already warn out "ohhhh that's how you do that". The project at the end of the chapter is drawing a 3-D tree in a box. It's pretty cool. I've never been much of a drawer, but my tree actually looks pretty good. I was really surprised how easy it was. I think that things like that and even the selecting would be a lot easier with a tablet. I've always wanted to try one but I don't know anyone who owns one and I'm much too poor to purchase one. Some day I guess. I also learned how to remove red-eye from photos. It works pretty good if you can get the selectiong right. Although, I will tell you this now, it does not work on pictures of cats!

We're on our way, from misery to happiness today...

We have now switched all of our customers over to continuous updates. It was a little rocky but I think that things are starting to settle down now (I hope anyway). I'm not sure what the customers think of it. Probably split. Sort of like the feeling in the office about it. Seems pretty good to me. Especially with the critical changes we've been making lately. Instead of having to tell the customers they have to wait 3 months for something that is already done, we can say that they'll have it Friday morning.

Well that went quick!

Christmas is over for another year. One of the best gifts I got this year is moving all of our customers over to continuous updates. No more huge headaches every three months. No more telling the customer that they will have to wait for their changes. No more merging fixes in. Yeah! Of course, this sort of thing will have it's own challenges but hopefully they won't be too terrible. We already have a beta group running like this and they seem to be doing well. We will be moving another group over tonight. It should be interesting.

Everyone Loves Documentation...

And if you believe that, do I have a car to sell you! I recently had the wonderful pleasure of printing a binding a manual. The whole point of software is to save paper and then they need a manual printed out because they can't read it on the screen. They need to be able to hold something in their hands, and write on it and mark it all up with little notes to themselves.

All of our documentation is saved in HTML files. There is a lot of stuff in there that does not need to be printed (certain links and notes). All the images need to be resized to fit on 8x11'' paper. Page breaks need to be set up correctly. So on and so on.

The first issue was trying to get the HTML files to export out of our software with all the correct style sheet stuff. We had some export code but I seemed to need something more specific for the job so I ended up writing some new code. This handled stuff like getting rid of the screen style sheets and using the print style sheets for everything, ignoring pages that were tagged to hide, and evaluating calls to standard code. Good.

So then I had one huge HTML file that was formatted pretty much the way I wanted it to print. Now I wanted to add a table of contents. For the life of me I could not get the HTML file, exactly the way it was, into a text document to add a table of contents. The images would resize, I would lose the page breaks, and things that were supposed to be hidden would start showing up. So, fine, I would just have to add something to my new manual exporter to add a list of the contents at the beginning if wanted. So I whipped up some code to run recursively through the pages that were to be include in the document being exported and to add them all to an unordered list with gradually shrinking font size. That turned out pretty good. No page numbers but the order of how things appear in the document is there so you can find the section and the general area the documentation you are looking for is in. There, all I have to do now is print it.

Of course, three seconds after I finished printing it out it was already out of date. Not to mention that printing it out took a good couple hours. Of course I started it one night before leaving the office only to come in the next morning and of course find the printer out of paper. So then I had the pleasure of making enemies of anyone trying to use the printer the next morning and of sifting through hundreds of pages of help looking for someone's one page task report. So, after all that is done, I hear "That was supposed to be in color". DOH!! Well I'm not reprinting it all now. This will have to do and I will make sure to do the next one in color. Since I already printed the whole manual in black and white that I would make sure to do the covers for each module in color. So I print them out on some nice card stock and get the wholes all punched out for binding and I hear "You didn't laminate those?". Ugh!! Nope, I didn't laminate them. I'll remember that for next time. Honest! Then to binding. Heaven forbid the binding machine should take a break and just work with me long enough to get this done. I end up binding them all by hand (which is just fine because it was probably quicker then trying to figure out that stupid machine. Hmmm...I sound like a user!). You would think that having to write documentation is bad enough as it is, but then you have to print and bind it.

I don't know how to make the process any less painful. I guess the next time I have to do it all the code will already be written (great, the fun part will already be done). I used the export method I wrote to generate a PDF file for each module so that when the next customer wants a manual done I can just tell someone else where to get the PDF files and they can do all the printing and laminating and binding and then I won't have to worry about remembering to do it right. Which is good, because there are so many other things to worry about the documentation being in color.

The Aftermath of Friday the 13th

Well, I was right. It was definitely interesting. I was involved in a car accident and we ended up sinking in 10 feet of freezing cold ice water. Amazingly we escaped relatively unscathed. I was in shock for most of the weekend. It still feels like some crazy bad dream or something that only happens on TV or in the movies. This isn't supposed to happen to normal people. So now our car is gone and we are left cleaning up the mess left behind. Dealing with insurance and moving from borrowed vehicle to borrowed vehicle while we wait for our settlement. We also have the pleasure of having to tell our terrifying story over and over to everyone who asks what happened. And then we get to hear over and over again how lucky we are to be alive and how close we came to death and one small thing could have happened and we would have been toast. Now this only reinforces the terrible feeling we already have about what has happened. So I have basically been trying to tell everyone the story so that it's all over with and I won't have to do it any more. It's actually going pretty well. The first couple times I was pretty shaky but now it's not so bad. All I have to do now is figure out how to make the small things that used to be so important feel important again. It's funny how something like that can make everything look so different. All of a sudden I feel like I have no time left and so much to do. I haven't hardly even taken a break at work since for fear I will leave things unfinished. My favorite TV shows don't seem so vital to see. I hardly ever feel like eating any more. Sleeping is most difficult. I'm sure this is only a temporary state of shock and stress but it still makes life more difficult at a time when it sucks pretty hard already. I guess you just suck it up and hope you take away something good from the whole experience. And like everyone tells us, I guess we get to go car shopping now. Woohoo! Unfortunately I think that car shopping is one of those things that are fun if you choose them and painful if forced to.

Friday the 13th

Tomorrow is Friday the 13th and with the way things have been going, tomorrow should be interesting. But at least it's still a Friday.

When it snows...

It storms! Like things weren't bad enough already. We totally hooched our last round of updates. It was pretty bad. So now everyone is really tense and grouchy. I thought it was bad before. Everyone is disappointed and getting a little down about the whole thing I think. Not a whole lot has gone right this time around. It would be nice to see something go smoothly. It's getting to the point where it seems like no matter what we do, something is going to explode. And that always leads to grouchy, paranoid behaviour (sometimes good, sometimes bad).

Well, maybe tomorrow will be better. Eventually it has got to get better, right? I guess if it doesn't, we'll all be out of jobs soon! And then it won't really matter anymore.