I took the title of this post from a buddy of mine at http://geekeguy.blogspot.com/2010/03/squirrel.html. Seemed like an appropriate title for a post where I will talk about how many irons I have in the fire, and how many cookie jars I’ve got my fingers in. He said it well when he said that he changes direction more than his underwear. Then he went on about something else, blah blah blah SQUIRREL! I had already changed directions. He does paint some pretty awesome models, however! I saw what looked like a battleship, so I assume he’s working on ships now. But I digress…

I’m here to talk about me, and let’s face it, you are hear to read about me. You must be the poster boy, or girl, of boredom… or related to me… Or both… Probably both. So, it seems I haven’t written since January. Let’s see if I can’t catch you up, faithful readers.

Job. My job still rocks. I get to work with code and explore new technology. It’s my thang, you know. Nothing particularly interesting there. I’m working on .NET Remoting, which admittedly is not “new tech”, but it’s new to me, and it’s pretty neat stuff. I wish I could jump into WCF with the rest of the world, but the corporate machine moves slow and cautiously, so we are still using .NET 2.0 here. Nevertheless, .NET Remoting is proving to be some pretty neat and useful stuff. The foundation it is laying for me and my counterparts will no doubt be in valuable when we do move to .NET 3.5.

Bills are still piling up on us, like everyone else in the world. So, I still take side projects to supplement my income. It’s a great way to supplement the income and get some extra cash into the coffers. I’m doing this stuff at home anyway, so might as well make some cash at it too. I’m building up a nice client list and who knows maybe one day down the road it would be a sustaining income.

Heidi is slightly ramping up her cake decorating business again. I’m so glad to see her doing that. We both know it’s a passion for her, and I know that she would be wildly successful at it, given the proper time and place of business to do it. In the meantime, there’s yummy, home made, desserts at our house again. :)

The food we’re eating in general is much better now too, thanks to Heidi. She has taken it upon herself to make sure we are all eating whole foods at least 90% of the time, and that the meat we eat is properly handled through it’s entire lifecycle. We watched Food, Inc. recently and it was a bit of a wake up call for us. Nothing we didn’t already know, but we just got tired of being ok with it. I must admit, I feel a heck of a lot better now that my diet is better. Can’t wait to get further down the road with it.

I recently had to put in a new climate control system for my home office. Too much computer equipment in there now! Kinda neat to have that room on its own “zone”.

My son is still having heart “flutterings” or whatever. Not sure if I mentioned this yet, and too lazy to go check. But he’s been having some heart “vibrations” (that’s what he calls them). They last a couple seconds, and scare him sometimes. We had a monitor on him for a month to capture these things. Doc said nothing looks weird. So, not sure what it is. It’s pissing me off that we can’t find anything solid on it. More to come on that — hopefully a solution — soon.

Games!! We all know how I love my games! Well, there’s this new game called, “WORK YOUR ASS OFF CUZ YOU GOT BILLS” that I’ve been playing. … Stupid bills. I got a nice new gaming machine, and haven’t been able to stretch its legs yet… grrrr.

That’s about it… More to come hopefully… But you know how that goes. :) I’m gonna hit post before I change my mind and post nothing.

Yep, I’m installing Windows at home again… Fret not, it’s just for gaming. I mean, that’s what winders is for, right? I need some gaming fix and I need Windows in order to do it in a non-stressful fashion. So, here we go.

First XP CD I found produced a blue screen when trying to start the Windows GUI for installation. Not a good start. Though, I thought it an appropriate welcome back to the neighborhood.

The second CD I found installed just fine. But, look at this, no video driver, no ethernet, no SM Bus, no “PCI Device”, no “USB Device”, and no 3D video controller… So much for plug and play. But again, I imagine it would be much the same as returning to Korea after all these years and smelling the wonderful open sewer system again. Oh yes… I remember that…

Ok, now we’re in driver hell. Yes, folks, no matter what Billy-boy would have you believe you do need to fetch drivers for XP most of the time. Kinda sad that it didn’t have the network driver built in, however. That little bit of fun makes it particularly difficult. So, I use my trusty laptop to download the necessary drivers. I installed the video, network, and chipset drivers. I was installing the video drivers lastly and when it came time to be done it asked me as per usual, “Restart Now?”. To which I was going to say yes. But, no… USB had died. No PS2 ports for keyboards, or and don’t you love how there is no CLI (especially a remote CLI) to enable a graceful shutdown. Looks like this reboot will be medieval style.

Well, FINALLY all the drivers are good. Had to step back the nVidia driver because the newer one was borking up. Other than that, we’re good. Doing the Update – Reboot dance now. Rhys is begging me to install the Sims…. I can’t wait to install some Counter-Strike tho. ;)

I’m goin crazy here. Due to various factors in my life, I’m currently pretty broke. I’ve been working like crazy, both at my day job, and at my wanna-be job, and I’ve been goin nuts. I haven’t gamed in weeks aside from an occasional Angband quest.

I decided to give Freeciv another shot. I’ve always been a Civilization junkie in the past, and I’ve followed the Freeciv movement for years. It never seemed up to snuff, or maybe I just wasn’t feeling it. Those that know, know that Civilization is a pretty serious addiction. You have to be ready for the plunge. :) Well, I think I’m ready for the plunge.

I’ve got a Freeciv server on my main server and my main workstation now, and am picking the game up pretty quickly. I’m really excited to see the flexibility of this game. You can set coefficients for research, the year the game will end, production penalties, etc.

Another neat factor is the multiplayer aspect. It has always had a tilt to multiplay, which is something that the commercial Civilization always seemed to lack. Even when they finally implemented it, it just sucked! I haven’t had a chance to sample the multiplay on Freeciv yet, but I’m looking forward to it! Do you play? Drop me a line and let’s set up a game! Haven’t tried Freeciv yet? If you were or are still a fan of the Civilization series, then you MUST give Freeciv a shake. It’s totally worth it!

Ahhh, Angband. Such a wonderful game of yesteryear. Back in the day, I played it when it was named Moria. I remember the most impressive thing about this game was it’s sheer complexity and size. One of its claims to fame was the fact that it used up ALL of your computer’s RAM to play it. That is, if you were lucky enough to have a computer with 640k of RAM.

My friends and I used to crowd around my computer and play this game for HOURS on end. We’d set a 30 minute timer and take turns. Usually there were three of us playing. This was the extent of most multiplayer games of the day, you took turns and watched others play — and watching someone play a game with ASCII graphics was damn entertaining!!

To this day, Angband holds its own against the Halo’s and Half-Life’s because of it’s complexity in game play. Something which I find all too often lost in the advanced games of today. It’s a sad tragedy to me that the current generation of kids won’t have the kind of imaginative experience that this type of game provides. You can bet my son will play this game before I expose him to Halo, or Neverwinter, or whatever.