Some sad news on the home front. Get a tissue.

Since I don't think Violet could take announcing the news, I've decided to try and find a new home for our dog Sebastian (her site has pics). I just feel both he and us would be better off if he found a home that could take better care of him and give him more attention than we do. I posted an ad on Pet Finder 2 evenings ago and already we've had 4 inquiries about him. We met with one family today, a mom, pop, and 12yr old boy. They seem to be a great fit for our energetic "baby bastion". The meeting went well and we have another scheduled at their house for tomorrow to see if Sebastian will like their environment. They have 1 cat and 1 lizard. Although it does pain me a little to even conceive of putting him up for adoption, let alone going through with it, I believe it'll be for the best of everyone involved, especially our "pupper frog". My main issue with the whole ordeal is Violet's sorrow... she's the one that wanted him in the first place, and we've had him for 3 years and 1 month. Obviously we're all fairly attached.

Listing the advantages and disadvantages of giving Sebastian away for adoption would be somewhat distasteful, so I shall not do that. Suffice to say that I will not give him to anyone whom I don't think will give him a better life than we currently do. After all, he's a happy dog now. Its a difficult, life changing decision. I am not making it lightly.

Finally picked a GPS. Thanks to generous Best Buy gift cards from my folks, I was able to pick up the Garmin c330 GPS today. I like the interface and some of the features, but the route it calculated for me to take home from Best Buy went through several city streets and not the freeway, so I'm not sure I saved any time or distance with the GPS proposed route. Time will tell if the unit meets my high satisfaction demands.
I also looked at the TomTom One and Lowrance 350c, and several others in the $300-$500 price range. Some had some of the features I wanted but there wasn't one clear winner. I finally decided on the Garmin because of free updated POI (Points of Interest), clean interface, and cheaper price. Seeing how I had Best Buy GC I was limited in my choices though since Best Buy doesn't carry Lowrance GPS units.
As a result of this purpose, I have forgone my Xmas 2006 list and won't be getting anything from it. Ah well. Driving around New England SUCKS and a GPS should really help. I hope.

The Mrs. and I spent Xmas day at a friend's house eating lasagna, Oreo pie (which was frickin fantastic!), and playing games. We tried to watch A Christmas Story, but I didn't much care for it so we stopped about 1/4 of the way in. Violet did very well in Iron Dragon. If we had finished the game she had a good chance of winning. I have this week off from work. My plans include finishing NWN2, getting the oil changed in my car, and cleaning the house a bit. Exciting, huh?

Violet got her Xmas present several months ago (80gb iPod) so you can refer to her blog (link is on the right) for that. I haven't bought anything for myself yet. I am looking into getting a GPS, but haven't decided which make/model I want or even if the cost justifies the the device. Fortunately we've paid off all our credit cards except one, so that makes me very happy. It only took a several years :) But I digress...

Happy holidays everyone! As my mom says, I hope you got everything you wanted and wanted everything you got.

I enjoyed the 3 part mini series The Lost Room.
It was very different, fairly weird, and entertaining in a Clockwork Orange kinda way.
If you didn't catch this Sci-Fi show, then you missed out. They've got a lot of other good looking shows on the horizon too. Like The Desden Files. A few others too. I approve of Sci Fi taking on more original series. Good for them.

I still wanna know what the coat hanger does.

Well, *I* wouldn't want one of these weird tech watches, but I'm not afraid of robots from the future. Speaking of weird tech, check this out.

Violet's favorite thing to do for Xmas is to look at lights. New England homeowners appear to "get it" and we've seen some really nice lights this year. Nothing as good as the crazy light guy at the top of the hill in Escondido, but he was special. Anyway...

We went to this supposed amusement park/light extravaganza called Edaville. It was South of Boston a ways, just a few miles from the King Richard Faire in fact. Since we had a doc appointment in downtown Boston we decided to visit the Red Robin down South since our proximity wasn't too much farther and Violet LOVES Red Robin. There aren't any anywhere near here North of Boston. But they might be building one next year. Anyway, the park probably 89 mins from home, which is a good distance but not too bad.

Apparently our camera works pretty crappy in the dark while moving. They had a train that took us around the entire park and I took several pictures. But they all turned out blurry or too dark though. Bummer deal.

The lights were OK.. Here's Violet near a pair of animated kissing reindeer (Rudolph finally gets some). It was mainly a park for small kids, maybe under age 10. Its a cranberry farm outside the winter months, apparently. We went on the Ferris wheel and the carosel and I tried Fried Oreos for the first time (The more you ate, the better they tasted).




The train ride was OK. Here's a pic of me in front of a train they had on display. I have the same model train (HO scale). Oh you didn't know I did model railroads? Oh my yes. I have lots of trains, many of which are antique, miniature houses and activity scenes, lights, and US-1 Electric Trucking. Its like a racecar track but you control semi's and you can backup on special tracks to load and unload stuff like logs and gravel and such. I loved it as a kid. I had it setup on a large pool table cover in the garage back when we lived in SoCal, but alas, I haven't had the space to build it back up. :(

We wont go back unless we have some small kids to tote along, and the 14 dollar cover price was a little steep, but overall it was a nice time spent together. And I suppose that what really matters.

Regardless of your political preferences, outside your financial status, and beyond your cultural heritage... We're ALL GONNA DIE. That'll solve traffic, but not in the way you probably want.

Everyone knows about it, but everyone ignores it because of propaganda, ignorance, refusal to believe, despair, or whatever. Well, stop ignoring it and DO something about it. Start by watching the movie An Inconvenient Truth. Don't just be aware of the truth. Accept it. Believe it. Live it. Otherwise, you won't be.

There's so many sad things going on in the world, but this is probably the biggest threat to the American way of life that I can think of. In fact, it's a threat to everyone's way of life.

Being in the Boston area, there are numerous Italian sandwhich shops and restaraunts. All mom and pop shops, really.. not a lot of chain restaraunts here. Anyway, My latest craze has been the Chicken Parmesan dish. Its bascaily Chicken, Cheese, and Marinara sauce. Im not a big fan of the sauce but usually its not real sauce with bits of onions and tomatoes in it. Bleh. But I've acquired a taste for it and have ordered it a lot in the last few weeks.

Parmesan is the common term for any cheese similar to Parmigiano Reggiano DOP. The word parmesan is derived from French referring to the original Italian Parmigiano Reggiano, such as Grana Padano, a hard, grainy Italian cheese close to Parmigiano Reggiano.

What is IQ? Raw Intelligence? The word Intelligence is difficult to define. Is someone smarter becasue s/he has learned a better vocabulary? Had the money to goto college and learn some math skills? Guesses right or is a "good" test taker? Ahh there's the rub then. While most tests are a set of culturally biased questions, and real Intelligence cannot be given a number (not even in GURPS). Strength can be more easily measured based on muscle mass, work/time, or some other quantifyable aspect. Intelligence cannot. For one, its too vague. Some think Wisdom adds to your intelligence while others insist its knowledge and memorization of raw data facts. Afterall, if you can remember a lot of stuff, people tend to think you're "smart". This doesn't mean someone with photographic memory is a genius though. Knowing facts and providing useful analysis of the data is totally different. Computer's can store/retrieve vast amounts of data, but that's all it is. Data. There's no information contained in it. That requires intelligence.

Anyway, today's rant is brought to you courtesy of Tickle IQ, one of the more reputable IQ tests (MENSA probably being the top respected one).
Anyway, my results:

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This number is based on a scientific formula that compares how many questions you answered correctly on the Classic IQ Test relative to others.

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns. And that's just some of what we know about you from your IQ results.
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Apparently this puts me in the top 10%. Take for that what you will I suppose. MENSA accepts only the top 2%. Naturally they want me to pay for the rest of the results, which I won't do. When I was a kid myIQ was rated at 145, so either I'm dumber in my old age or the tests are slightly different (most likely both of these things are true). I'd also like to say, for the record, that I have a TERRIBLE memory and would very much like to be the subject of an experiment to give me DVR (Digital video recording) like memory (Photographic memory is so 80s).

I forgot to mention that I went to Target after going to Best Buy, CompUSA, and Staples. Don't go to Target on Black Friday. It's bad. Standing room only and lines to the back of the store in nearly every isle. I reccommend against it.

Violet and I went to the mall later in the evening, around 5 or 6. Picked up Tomb Raider: Legend for the Xbox 360 for 25 bucks (used) from Gamestop. Not bad. I had already played the demo and liked it well enough.

Stopped at Hot Topic and got a Nintendo backpack for 18 bucks. I couldn't find a product link anywhere for it outside of EBay, which is wierd. The sales associates couldn't find it either (online) and it took 3 of them to find one with a tag (which I personally think they just made up). Maybe its too new. I dunno. But it's my new gaming bag since I had to keep borrowing Violets. I also got a large black fuzzy dice looking thing that's actually a box with a zipper. It was a meager 10 bucks.

I also have to mention the smokin' hot redhead sales associate that also tried to sell me a nintendo belt. She also has, and apparently loves, the Wii. She showed me her Legend of Zelda belt (and most of her damn fine stomach since her shirt wasn't very long) too. I give her a 9.2. She'd get a higher score but was a little too thin to warrant it. Anyway, I didn't get the belt (it was a cub scout style elastic band and buckle with Nintendo icons on it) , since I don't much care for belts.

The Nintendo backpack combined with the Nintendo wallet I already have (and love, its awesome, and I get positive comments on it all the time) is pretty much all the same-brand name stuff I wanna have on my person. Besides, I've never owned or really played any Nintendo product. Doh!

You are The Sun

Happiness, Content, Joy.

The meanings for the Sun are fairly simple and consistent.

Young, healthy, new, fresh. The brain is working, things that were muddled come clear, everything falls into place, and everything seems to go your way.

The Sun is ruled by the Sun, of course. This is the light that comes after the long dark night, Apollo to the Moon's Diana. A positive card, it promises you your day in the sun. Glory, gain, triumph, pleasure, truth, success. As the moon symbolized inspiration from the unconscious, from dreams, this card symbolizes discoveries made fully consciousness and wide awake. You have an understanding and enjoyment of science and math, beautifully constructed music, carefully reasoned philosophy. It is a card of intellect, clarity of mind, and feelings of youthful energy.

What Tarot Card are You?
Take the Test to Find Out.

Warning: The name of my blog is Roland's Ramblings. So there.

Being the stupid person that I am, I woke up at 6:30am (mostly due to attic noises) and went early bird shopping today, on Black Friday. In case you didn't know, my understanding is that it's called that because that's when retailers finally see some profits, thereby going from the red (ink) to the black (ink). Kinda dumb if you ask me. I'm not sure how 1 month of holiday shopping can make up for 11 months of losses. Of course, I could never figure out how a store could sell something for a buck, unless they sold a LOT of them. Figure the mark up is 100% so profit is 50 cents. Then the company's rent is tens of thousands of dollars, payroll is hundreds of thousands of dollars, utility bills, insurance, advertising and marketing.. I just can't see how anyone stays in business. Does the dollar store really sell millions of units a month? I don't get it. I'm not sure I wanna get it. My mom always wanted me to take a few business and finance classes. Bleh I say. But I digress...

I went to Best Buy. I noticed 2 things. A line just to get into the store, and lots of lots of litter. Why can't people just carry the donut bag and coffee container they've already been carrying since 4am when their crazy asses got in line and put them in the trash cans? Litter was all over the parking lot (since the line extended well beyond the sidewalk and arond the building's corner). People are lazy, careless, and fairly self-absorbed. They don't care that the 18 year old kid has to come out 3 hours later with a snow shovel to scrape up the car-tire-ran-over litter. Perhaps Best Buy, knowing litter happens because, well, I assume they had this kinda thing happen last year, should put out several extra trash receptacles. Of course this would not eliminate the litter entirely, some people aren't just lazy, they're evil... but I'm pretty sure the trash in the parking lot would be greatly reduced.

Anyway, I eventually made it inside. I figured things would get beter once I got inside since they were obviously limiting the number of people inside due to some fire code or something. Errrrrr. Wrong Answer. Standing room only. God forbid if you had a cart. No aisle was safe, no corner unoccupied. Lines formed per department, not just at the front registers. Wanna LOOK at a camera?
BestBuy: "Wait in line."
Me: "But I'm not buying, I just wanna look."
Bestbuy: "Wait in line."

So I have to wait in a REALLY LONG line to just LOOK at stuff? Ouch. The Television department had 2 aisles of people waiting. Camera's had about 40' worth. Car accessories had 3 aisles full. Computers had 5 ailses worth of lines, though since I didn't get into the store until about 730am only 2 or so of those 5 ailses were full. Naturally, any good deals they may have had were gone. I didn't really wanna wait 2 hours in line to buy a bargain $2.99 dvd, so I left the store empty handed.

I walked across the parking lot to Compusa. No waiting. Not even a lot of people. Mysterious. Best Buy probably has better advertising. I dunno. I didn't see anything at CompUSA stand out either so I once again, left empty handed.

Driving wasn't SOOO bad, but keep in mind that I'm in New Hampshire, and I'm not at a big mall. It's a 6 lane road with fairly distributed shopping on both sides. Anyway I drove down a few blocks and happened to drive into a Staples lot. About 10 people per register but the store itself wasn't as full as I expected. Most of the bargain tables were picked clean though. I found one though that still had a few things in stock. Picked up a Maxtor 200GB hard drive for 20 bucks (after 50 instant savings and 50 easy rebate) and a 13 dollar (after 17.00 instant rebate and 6.00 easy rebate) 1GB Memory stick Pro Duo which came with a free Duo Adapter sleve. The Pro Duo fits in my PSP, and then I can put the memory stick into the adaptor sleve and put it in my digital camera. Cool Beans (I've been wanting one of these). The purchase line took FOREVER though. At least 15 or 20 minutes.

I also noticed a lot of people on their cell phones coordinating with their family or friends who were also shopping, either in the same store, comparing prices somewhere else, or were apparently online and giving advice on how good that bargain product really is.

Feeling a little sick in my stomach from getting up early and dealing with Best Buy, I went home content in the knowledge that my effort wasn't wasted. I was happy with what I got and my checks won't bounce. Now that's financing 101.

Monday is usually date night. Violet and I always go out to dinner and a movie, or something, on date night. Lately though we've been trying to save money by only going to the movies once a month instead of once a week. Otherwise we watch a movie at home thanks to netflix.

Anyway with all the overtime I was working we haven't really been sticknig to schedule, and since I'm on vacation so we treated ourselves to date night yesterday in the afternoon. We went and saw The Prestige. I liked it ok, but their constant use of flashbacks made the movie not flow very well, so I didn't care for that. Of course, I pretty much always hate flashbacks. Acting was good, sets and costumes were great, and I was very happy to see David Bowie as Nikola Tesla. Of course, I'm always happy to see Scarlett Johansson. But the way things were presented were done in such a way that I didn't care for their resolution. It was a little awkward. I preferred The Illusionist simply becasue the story was more romantic, straight foward (sorta), and had a happier ending. Also, I'm a big fan of Edward Norton. So go see it if you want, everyone else thinks its really great. But me.. bah.. It's merely OK.

Little trivia. I learned how to spell "vacation", and many other words ending in -tion (words ending with the syllable "shun") based upon the song of the same name. My mom would play this Connie Francis song on our old record player, which was more like a huge 8' long credenza with a record player in the middle and space for records on either side.

Anyway, I'm taking some comp time off and just hanging around the house, pestering violet (who is now working overtime.. grr) and trying to play a decent amount of Neverwinter Nights 2 before I go back to work.

My D&D game is back, having played game #6 on Wed. It was a good game but I wish we had more time per session so I could be more elaborate with my storytelling. (sigh). But getting in 3 or 4 hours on a wed night is better than nothing. I'm rewriting the campaign's website to be more blog like, to make it easier to post updates and such to it. I've had limited success thus far but hopefully I can get it to look the way I want it to look.

Oh, and there's a new feature, called LABELS. I can now catagorize each blog post with a title or two so people can quickly find all the posts relating to that topic. Not bad.

Sat and Sun I finally got a chance to sit down and play some Neverwinter Nights 2. Having already played the beta I knew what to expect, so I skimmed over the tutorial. The game gets better as you go.

I enjoy the adherence to the v3.5 rules and the VAST selection of races (all of em, including dark dwarves, drow, and planetouched), classes (including most prestige classes... Dragon Disciple? Red Dragon only. Shadow Dancer. Yup. Blackguard? Yup. Warlock? Yup. If its in the core rulebooks or players handbook 2, its there), spells, equipment, etc. Pretty aweseome.

The interaction with your party members and NPC characters is excellent, and I really get the sense that you can be whatever race or class or alignment you want and get customizable full content for it. No more wattered down or unallowed evil characters and no more ignoring consequences, good or bad, of your actions. The first party member that joins your ranks (if you so choose) is awesome.

The graphics are, well, vastly improved over NWN1. Heightmaps allow MUCH better landscapes and Speedtree allows for more natural looking foilage. Indoors are still tile based but the objects within are all placeable. Much better than NWN1.

However this is no Oblivion. The textures in NWN2 are crude, model quality is laughable, and the character customization (looks only) is barely existant. Maybe its an engine limitation but current RPGs are much better.

Bottom line.. If you didnt like NWN, you wont like this. If you are expecting Oblivion, don't.
NWN2 is a fine RPG, and definately worth checking out. 81/100.

Friday I got in my car and began to backup and immediately noticed something wasn't right. I've had this feeling before. Yup. A flat tire. Front passenger side. Doh. Well, I took Violet's car into work instead. But I ended up taking the day off so I came back home and removed the time. I noticed a rather large, probably 1/4" bolt, in the middle of the tread. That can't be good. It was a good sunny 60 (degF) day, soI thought I might as well replace Violet's 4 tires, which I should have done last winter. Certainly don't wanna do that after the winter hits. Having no Discount Tire Company around its pretty much a crap shoot, so I called around and did a lot (a few hours worth) of comparison shopping and tire size research in order to get the best value. I went with a place a few miles away who could repair my tire for 20 bucks and Violet's tires were on order for Sat delivery, total cost around 450. Well I got there and my tires wasn't fixable. Replacement would be 110 bucks or so and could probably be delivered on Sat. However they had a shipment of Violet's tires that had just happened to be restocked. SOOO Instead of getting my flat fixed on Fri and Violet's new tires on Sat, she got new tires on Friday and I got a new tire on Sat. BTW, remove the jack stand from under your car before trying to back out. Remember, knowing is half the battle.

Violet and I saw The Departed on Wed. Since I was working Monday night we postponed date night to Wed. The movie lives up to its title. Check the description and go see it. It'll definately be up for a few nominations. I didn't realize Boston had such history.

I've been having a tough time with the people renting our house in Madison. They bailed, and their last rent check bounced. This is not good for our hero. So its back on the for sale market. The carpet downstairs probably needs replaced so that's gonna cost. But they're gone. Really not his fault, his company promised him one thing but didnt keep that promise. Screwed both of us.

Other financial strains include the lack of being able to retire before the age of 100. I dont know how people manage their futures but I have no idea what all the stock and ira and crap is. In somewhat related news, Im a little nervous about taxes this year. Its gonna be messy.

I finally took a day off (Sunday) from work and we went to Salem(MA). We went on a haunted tour, which was ok. It was very windy but at leastit didnt rain. A good number of people were there. Violet got a really cool doll so I recommend checking her blog since Im sure she'll post a pic of it soon.

Haven't played D&D lately and dunno when we'll start back up. Hopefully next week. Ah well.

So I've been very busy the last week or so working 8-16 hour days and sometimes on Saturday. Not too bad really, 50 hours a week or so. Its worse at other companies, and I get free lunch, dinner, and comp time. We're only crunching becomes our release date is fast approaching(as you can probably tell if you check the release date listed on EB Games' website)

We've been polishing and bug fixing for awhile now. Sometimes I'm ok and only have a few issues on my plate (like now) and other times I've been overwhelmed with scores of issues that need resolution asap. If I was the kinda person that got stressed, these past 2 weeks probably would have caused some.

But something's gotta give, and Violet's been a real trooper about my absence from being home. I even skipped date night. I'm a bad monkey. I love you babykins! :)

Lots of people work overtime once in a while. Some even do it a lot. But in the Gaming Industry overtime is so common it has its own term: Crunch Mode. "Crunch Time" is usually expected for a few days to a few weeks prior to major milestones, demos, alpha and beta, and release candidates.

Since most game industry employees are salary, there is usually no additional "compensation" for this overtime. It's just an expected part of making games. Gaming geeks, passionate about making games, willingly conceed to this overtime. Why is there crunch time? Many reasons. But first let me explain the triage of game development as I understand it. There are 3 things that you can adjust during a game's development cycle:

Resources: Add more people, outsource to 3rd party companies, etc. At some point this can be saturated and adding more people hinders production instead of speeding it up.

Time: Postpone the due date. A lot of companies do this, and some have done it so much they don't even list due dates for their games anymore. Instead they say "when's it done". This probably means they care about the other 2 aspects more than this one.

Budget: This may seem like resources, but it's not. It's the result of adjusting the other 2 and locking this aspect down limits the other two. In the end, the game has to make money or else there may not be another one. Like resources though, there is a saturation point where adding more money yields questionable results.

Sometimes a due date is a due date and you cannot postpone it, such as when a game title is based on the release of a movie. Or your publisher already planned the title launch with the release of a new console and has spent untold dollars for marketing and shelf space. So if you can't adjust the time, you can either pour more money into the project, which only works for a while, or add more people, which again, only works for a while.

So why is there crunch mode? Can't management plan and schedule these things to be done on budget, on time, with the people provided? Well, That's NOT an easy task. Game Development is basically taking a whole bunch of mud, throwing it against a wall, and seeing what sticks. Some companies throw mud at random and some others throw mud pies. Either way, its still mud. There's no way to really know how long something is going to take until its done, and believe me, things are never truly done. You can always make tweaks, adjustments, polish, and add more features. It's only "done" when its "Good Enough (for now)" and you move on.

Also, there's no real way to know everything that there is to schedule. Who knew 3 months ago that the model the artist made that the designer put into the level wasn't going to "work". You don't. Who knows how much time it takes to put in "Feature X". You may have a good, perhaps even educated or experience based, guess. But you don't know. God forbid the publisher changes their minds and decide on a different model. So you can't blame the producers. Or the artists. Or the designers. Or the programmers. You could blame the publisher but they're the ones paying your salary and are taking most of the risk so its clearly not their fault. So what to do? Just accept that crunch mode happens. Everyone else has.

What matters here then is how munch crunch time is required? If you're crunching for weeks at a time all the time, then that's bad. Very Bad. Look for another job bad. American McGee Presents Bad Day LA bad. And that's bad. If you only crunch a few days before a major milestone, then buy a house near your company... you're staying.

The average lifetime in the game industry is 2-3 years. Why would someone give up on their "Dream Job"? Crunch Mode. It'll burn you out faster than a California brush fire. That and the toll it takes on family is enormous. Also add in the fact that people in the game industry tend to make less money, on average, then someone else of their field in the "professional" sector.

What also matters is compensation. Many companies don't compensate you. Sucka. Others? Well... it may be a "volunteer" basis. If you stay late you get a free dinner. Cool. Work on a Saturday and you'll get compensated PTO time. Score. You're still a sucka, but you're a well rested, well fed sucka.