Hungry hippo

  I feel like a hungry hippo right now for some reason. Normally I get quite hungry come lunch time since I have breakfast so early with getting up really early etc. However today I'm pretty ravenous. It also seems an old coworker is in town and wants to go out to lunch with us today as well so it should be a decent lunch break for a change.

  The only downside to all this hunger? I've put a little weight on recently and am trying to take it off so I need to be careful I don't overeat at lunch and end up a porker.

The cure is worse

  My wife has just stopped taking a medication that she doesn't want to stay on long term and really doesn't need to take anymore. It helped with her condition at first and allowed her to get through something. However in coming off this medication the list of side effects that can last a few weeks is pretty horrendous. Anything from hallucinations to continuous headaches to insomnia and mood swings.

  Reading around in how other people have come off this medication (which has in some studies been shown to literally be addictive) and a lot of people fail to stop since they can't deal with the side effects of stopping. I know my wife is strong but even she is going to have a hard time getting through all this shit.

  It is hard to believe that doctors will prescribe a medication to help someone that they know has serious problems when you stop taking it. You can't prescribe something when you know that person has a chance to be stuck taking it for the rest of their lives even when they no longer have the condition for which they are taking the medicine.

  One final note to my wife, you will get through this. I'll do everything I can to help including finding things to take your mind off it as much as I can.

Stressful fun

  I've commented before about the game Demon's Souls. The sequel Dark Souls is coming out next week and in order to give an idea of how stressful but fun the game can be I suggest you watch this quick look and get an idea of what the game is about. Managing to beat parts of the game is so satisfying yet the result of getting hit just a couple of times is death and having to redo an area. The strange thing is I quite fancy trying this new game despite how the previous game made me feel.

Game choice dilemma

  I have a choice to make. As I've mentioned before the end of the calendar year is a time when a lot of new videogames are released in order to get in the glut of games bought during the Christmas period. Normally I get quite a few games for Christmas so try not to buy any of the games coming out in that time period. However most years I will find a game or two that I can play for the entirety of October through Christmas day so I can keep myself occupied with something. Last year it was the extra content for Borderlands (which I'm actually still playing through again now). The year before that it was Dragon Age: Origins where I played through it multiple times.

  All of these games are ones that have a lot of content that take dozens and dozens of hours to get through. My dilemma this year is what am I going to play in the run up to Christmas. I'm half tempted by Dead Island despite the reports of it having technical glitches. Then there is Skyrim which I know will have a lot of content but doesn't come out until early November. I've looked at games that came out earlier this year that I didn't play and there is nothing worthwhile there. You can see my dilemma now :| .

  I'm sure I'll find something and no, not playing games is not an option :P .

Some thoughts

  Just a few random thoughts as I go about my work day today

• The place where my wife and I stayed overnight for our anniversary had a very obvious collection of trophy wives, it was quite amusing and/or sad depending on how you look at it.
• Speaking of the place we were, my wife was the sexiest, smartest, best dressed woman in the dining room that night.
• Big cats really are just larger versions of our smaller cats. They just also have the ability to beat the crap out of you if they want.
• Also speaking of eating, use less garlic American chefs. There are other flavours and aromas to use.
• I have a mass of new code to review at the moment. All of our big features are currently hitting code completion and now being picked apart for errors. A tedious but very necessary process, especially given the quality of code some people produce.
• We have our appointment for biometrics next week for our citizenship application. More fingerprinting and god knows what else (retina stuff maybe)
• Seeing the previews of the upcoming videogames this year is getting me excited to play some of them. They look really good and more of what I really enjoy.
• I can't believe our car has actually hit 232000 miles and is still going. Yay for high mileage. I want to see how many more miles we can get, hopefully lots more. I think we could hit 400000 or 500000 miles easily at this rate.

  So there we go, just a few random things for today. I need to go explain why the way something is being done is wrong now on this conference call so until next time.

Cats

  Not much time today to blog, being out of work for two work days makes things back up a bit. But I just thought I would post this picture I took at the zoo this weekend of one of my favourite cats having fun with its food.

18 years

  Tomorrow will be my wife and I's 18th wedding anniversary. That is a heck of a long time for a marriage, especially nowadays. I was talking to my parents earlier and they just celebrated their 43rd. Kind of scary that people can be together for so long. I want to be with my wife for at least 180 years :| .

  So just a quick message to my wife should she read this. I love you with all my heart and hope for years and decades with you to come.

I think too much

  I have found an excuse for thinking too much and yawning it seems. A recent study has found out one of the reasons why people yawn. It actually cools the brain down, something which happens when you think a lot :| . Therefore I can successfully conclude every time I yawn it is because I use my brain too much and it overheats. Nothing wrong with that logic at all.

  Now back to my regularly scheduled yawning at work so I can look like I'm working even harder than I do.

New TV

  The new TV season is starting here in the US. It is much longer and drawn out over the year compared to back in England. It makes for getting more of programs that you like (20 plus episodes per season) but can also lead to some dramas being dragged out far too long with much too much filler. Normally there are a few new programs we want to watch each year, this year not being terribly different. Also most of the programs we watched last year are coming back.

  The only choice now is how much longer we watch the programs we have been watching and which if any of the new programs we continue to watch after trying them out. So far there is nothing to drop but there has only been a trickle of stuff to watch so far, the next couple of weeks is when it really gets going and our Tivo earns its keep. Having a good stable of programs to watch keeps my wife and I occupied incredibly well. We enjoy the comfort of lounging together on the sofa, making occasional comments to each other about the program. The Tivo is also invaluable, being able to watch what we want when we want rather than the forced schedule of the networks. Once you go to that style of watching it is impossible to go back. Having the ability to do what you want when you want is something that needs to come to more areas of life, less rigorous timing for things is a good thing.

Something more cheerful

  My last post was a bit glum so try watching this video about Borderlands and try to tell me the style of the game isn't amusing.

Always more to do

  I got in to work today and the list of things to do is always there. There is never a time when I get here and there is nothing to do. You could say that is a good thing since I am kept gainfully employed but for once it would be nice if there was nothing for me to do and I could have time for me and my wife. Even at home there is always things to do to maintain the house and get what we need.

  I just think I've gotten to the point in my life where is becomes a bore and a chore. There is no joy in the time when I do what I want and not what I want to do since I always seem to be dreading the next thing I have to do rather than enjoying the thing I want to do. Maybe its something to do with the way my mind works with jumping from one thought to another over and over covering all sorts of things. Maybe I"m just eternally tired. I don't know.

  Anyway, going to slog through some work and then go home to where I want to be (well with whom I want to be with really) for another day and decide if this is really the best way to spend my life. Maybe I do need a change of work scenery or something but it really is nothing but drudgery right now.

A mix of stuff

  This weekend turned out to be a mixture of things going on. Most of it was being lazy doing things in the house which is fine by me. Sometimes it seems I barely get to see the inside of the house other than the few hours in the evening I have during the week (no, being asleep in the bedroom doesn't count). It is our home despite the bad memories from the years of crappy neighbour we had. That and being there with my wife and the cats is all I ask for in the world.

  We watched a couple of films we picked up. Journey To The Center Of The Earth and Thor. Both decent films if not outstanding. The first one was a little disjointed in how it told the story and there were some very ridiculous defying of the laws of physics and thermodynamics going on but that is not what you should expect with that kind of film. Thor turned out better than I expected if not as good as other superhero films. It is nice that the character got a film explaining who he is and where he came from that some others may not get when the main Avengers film comes around that brings all the superheros together.

  There was also quite a bit of great cooking done by my wife this weekend. Various biscuits, cakes and stuff all experimented with to try out some specialised recipes. They all turned out well and the flourless cake particularly was lovely. It took a bit of shopping at the whole foods to get the stuff we needed but it was worth it to be honest.

  Unfortunately my wife felt not so great for bits of the weekend. Her various tablets are messing her body up a bit and she is not feeling that well. Also she is still down about things even though it is slowly getting better. I'm going to be right there for her forever so one day she will come through it all.

  As an aside I spent quite a bit of time playing games this weekend as well, finishing Two Worlds II finally (pretty good overall but some of the systems needed work, combat especially and the game was a little rough) before going back to Borderlands. Something about that game with its loot driven, character levelling and art style just makes me want to sit there for hours at a time and keep going. Not sure what it is about it but I've spent a lot of time on that game since I got it. Strange how a game I didn't think would hold my interest when I completed it kept me playing and coming back to it.

  Anyway, going to finish my work now then home to pick up my wife and take her to get her new glasses which turned up today. We shall see if they actually got the prescription right this time since the previous one was messed up by the doctor.

Slouching around

  Just a quick post to start the week off since there is a lot of work going on at work at the moment ( a novel concept I know ). My wife went to bed early last night since she wasn't feeling too well so I got to slouch around on the sofa playing the ever addictive Borderlands. During that time Daisy our smallest cat decided I would make a good place to sleep for a good 45 minutes. Normally she will sit on my wife for a few minutes and never sits on me really so it was quite amazing she did this. To celebrate the occasion I took a picture as best I could with angling my phone around and pointing it at my lap.

I ignore most people

  The vast majority of people in the world I end up categorising as "ignorable". As in I don't consider them worth spending any time with or interacting with. Given that with my position at work I make a lot of the decisions about whom to hire this can be a bit of a problem. I tend to only really want the actually good people working here and going through the whole assessing and trying to work out how good someone actually is can be trying.

  I've got yet another person to interview in a bit, they have flown down from another state just to be interviewed by us. We've actually done a bit more pre screening than usual with this person due to the cost of bringing them down here. Not sure how it will turn out though since if this person ends up being good enough and they accept any potential offer we give them they have to pay to relocate themselves. We have made it clear we are not going to assist them.

  These decisions are rarely simple. Sometimes they are but more often than not when someone is so bad they don't even get an interview and when someone is so good we send them an offer right after the interview. It is the vast majority of people who fall somewhere in between that makes it so hard.

Multiple thoughts

  Another pretty busy day at work here so far which is why for me this blog post is later in the day than usual. My mind has been all over the place looking at various technical problems and working out solutions to them. Through all that though my mind doesn't want to sit still or concentrate on one thing for very long. It is trying to think about more enjoyable things to do with it's time.

  Hmm, I seem to be embodying my mind with a mind of it's own as if it isn't my own mind. Strange that. Maybe its because that is how it feels. It isn't that my mind is thinking about bad things, just that it seems to be jumping all over the place at the moment.  So far it has gone from coding stupidity someone did to a game I would like to play to wanting to cuddle up with my wife to wondering what the drive home will be like to thinking what to get my wife for Christmas to boobs to looking forward to watching some of the TV programs that are coming back to being fed up with my feet for being too warm in my shoes but too cold out of them. All that in the space of a few minutes so you can image what the day has been like.

  The really annoying bit of it is that I need to get down and try and hammer out the final part of the design for my next project at work so we can get it done by the end of the year which requires me to think long and hard about things to get it right. That and I would rather think about more pleasant things all of the time.

Fuss over nothing

  Scanning through the usual news and stuff sites this morning I came across one news story that made me think "why is this even news?". I'm not going to say exactly what it was but if you have seen the fuss online over a couple of simple nude pictures of a certain celebrity today you know exactly what I'm talking about.

  For starters I should add personally I don't think this particular celebrity is that attractive but she seems to have her fans. The truly stupid thing about this is that these pictures are not carefully taken ones to be released in some magazine or something. They are pictures taken by the person themselves using a phone. Why do celebrities insist on doing this, getting access to those kind of pictures is actually easier than most people realise and for a famous person like that it is just asking for them to released. I'm not saying they shouldn't take pictures like that for whatever reason they want (presumably to show to someone they care/love/whatever about) and they are free to do that. I'm just saying be careful about it if you care enough to not want them to become public domain (which they are effectively now they are on the internet).

  The other side to this kerfuffle is the fuss people are making. They are two pictures of a nude female, like that has never happened or been seen by anyone before. The nude form shouldn't be anything to fuss about, admired yes, but acting as if it is some illicit thing that only a select few are special enough to get access to just makes it something it is not. It is something that anyone should consider normal. In this country especially there is an extreme phobia of anything resembling "impropriety" with regards to nudity and sexuality that just screams being stupidly repressed and juvenile. The only reason there should be a kerfuffle is that these pictures were stolen, not the content of the pictures themselves.

  There are billions of ways to get to look at nude pictures (this is the internet after all) so focusing so much on something that basically is of no importance distracts from things which are actually important. I would much rather point out that one of the Republican candidates to run for the presidency next year declared last night she believes that vaccination causes mental retardation and so should be stopped and have people be aware of such careless idiocy than all the discussion over a couple of stupid pictures.

  Basically what I'm trying to say is, get people talking about what really matters when it comes down to it and leave all the rest of the fluff to die down.

Hot stuff

  Kind of noisy here at work at the moment. The air conditioning in the lab has failed and so in order to keep all the equipment in the lab cool we have two huge fans blasting cold air from the office in to the lab. These fans are about 3 feet wide and 6 feet tall so they are incredibly noisy. I've been sitting here with my headphones in most of the morning listening to something else. It has made a nice change since anybody who wants to walk up to me and ask something really can't because it is impossibly to hold a conversation here. I think I'm going to be left alone most of the day which is nice.

  There is something else I want to blog about in a bit as well but I need to get one a couple of conference calls I have this morning, back later.

Well here we go

  We got our official notification from USCIS (United States Custom and Immigration Service) this morning that our application to become US citizens has been received and is now being processed. Given that someone else at work here just went through the whole process in two and a half months we could be dual citizens of the US and UK by the end of the year. Kind of a big step when you think about it, with the green cards we were allowed to stay here but a lot of rights are denied to us. When this happens we really will have the ability to live anywhere we want in either the US or the UK (money requirements notwithstanding).

  I think the major thing though is that even though we will become citizens of this country we will never consider ourselves anything other than British. We have still spent the majority of our lives as British citizens and that is our background and culture. Given how much of our financial life is tied to this country as well we may well end up spending a large portion of the rest of our lives here as well but for all intents and purposes we are British people who happen to want to live in a different country. To do that we must be US citizens to make the most of it.

  Also with us becoming citizens it does allow two actual intelligent people to vote in the elections here so that rather than idiot voting for complete idiots it is now two intelligent people voting for the least idiotic idiot.

One more thing

  Have to mention my wife got major coolness points this weekend. She sat with me and watched the second and third Lord Of The Rings films on Saturday and Sunday. All four plus hours of them each. They are still incredibly cool films (despite the annoyingly crapness of Elijah Wood) and worth seeing again and again.

Good weekend and stuff

  Had a great weekend with the wife. We went to the zoo on Saturday and became members of it. We go there enough that it seemed worth doing since the membership will pay for itself in just over two visits and we do at least that many visits in the year membership period.

  Then Sunday came around and a very large Lego project was tackled. This time it was an Imperial Flagship and it turned out to be huge. This thing is two and a half feet long and two feet tall all told. It has full rigging and sails and a lot of little details scattered around. My wife even joined in by building a small set of Pirates of the Caribbean stuff to add to the ship so now it has two Jack Sparrows on it with his extras as well as the rest of the crew.

  Also this morning I saw the news that the guy who played Spartacus had died. He died of the exact same form of cancer that my friend has and my friend is now in complete remission and finishing up his last round of chemo. Strange how vastly different the end result can be, one person died within 18 months, the other has the rest of a normal life to look forward to.

Finally Friday

  Yet again it is the end of the work week and work is done with again. Now comes the good bit of life, the bit where you get to spend an extended amount of time with the one you love. In my case obviously it means I get to spend time with my wife and she with me.

  When it comes down to it, that is all there is to life. Being able to spend it with someone, doing things you enjoy doing. Beyond the basic surviving and making sure the world doesn't fall apart there really is nothing else. In that regard there is no one else I would rather do it with. I've known that since the day I saw my wife, when I first spoke to her online all those years ago.

  One day I will be able to spend as much time as I want with her and she can get as much time with me as she wants (although you could argue that I would annoy her too much if that came true :| ). I know not every day will be perfect and not every moment will be completely happy but I can't imagine wanting anything but to be with her.

  Even if we are not doing things together I want to be physically near her, be able to reach out and touch her at any moment, to look over and see her and to say anything I want to her at any time. As they say, these are the days of our lives and I don't want to waste them being with anyone else. I want to be with her always.

New TV stuff

  Every year there are a bunch of new TV shows to try out. This year though there seem to be some very slim pickings amongst the huge number of new programs over all of the channels. Most of what my wife and I watch falls in to a few categories so we usually know what might interest us. Also more often than not we will discard new programs if they don't do anything interesting quite quickly since we would rather watch some good TV than lots of bad TV.

  What does still amaze me though is how quickly networks (FOX in particular) will pull a new TV program off the air if it doesn't get the ratings they want. Considering that the ratings system in itself is incredibly inaccurate (despite what the ratings company will tell you) and the fact that some really good TV programs took a while to get going it seems really short sighted to do this. They spend all this money making the program yet the only way they can make money back is the vast amounts they make from adverts. In the end this business model is going to kill TV given how few people actually watch adverts and using that as your reason for showing a TV program seems really dumb to me. Then again I'm a guy who watched Heroes for far too long, eventually giving up on it before it died out.

My brain doesn't wake up

  Was reminded again today that I left some leftovers from last night at home rather than having them for lunch today. When I get up the morning I have such a fixed pattern of behaviour done in such a short amount of time (from waking up to walking out the door is less than 15 minutes which includes washing, dressing, feeding cats) that anything out of the ordinary I completely pass on.

  The most annoying thing about this, I would much rather eat the good food my wife makes than the average at best food supplied here in the small cafeteria we have.

Holy fuck

  Sometimes people try something that seems nuts. I just saw one of these things. Watch this video and tell me that this person isn't just a little bit insane for doing something like that.

A world of idiots

  There may be a lot of people out of work at the moment but for a lot of them they really don't stand a chance. We've been interviewing more people here to try and fill lots of open positions we have and you can tell why people were let go from their previous jobs. They barely scape by doing what they do, show no actual intelligence in a profession that requires you to do nothing but think and just generally come across as apathetic.

  Even the one guy we did find that showed promise ended up taking a position elsewhere, he didn't explain why he turned us down though so it is hard to say what happened there. We pay well (not the best but not a pittance either), there is a lot of challenging work to be done and generally a lot of stuff to keep you busy. Maybe people just want to be able to keep plodding along, getting a wage for not much effort. It would be nice if I could get some of that but in the end that just backfires on you since those that just do that get left behind in the end. I've seen it happen too many times over the years here. Even those who are seemingly leading, when they start to think their way is the only way, end up being kicked out. In the end it is all about working with other people, being productive and actually getting useful results.

  One other wish I do have about this though is that I wish the people who don't put in any effort would stop draining me away via taxes and fees so that they can have the easy life. You can only drain away from the people that do stuff so much before they give up and stop producing. If enough people do that then the hanger ons will have nothing to hang on to with no way to achieve anything. As a long term plan it is a guarantee to leave yourself in the shitter as it were.

Ah long weekend

  There is something incredibly relaxing about having a long weekend. The usual two days never seem to cut it, mainly because you do stuff in a routine and by the time Sunday evening comes around that dread of having to go back to work kicks in. The extra day though that a longer three day weekend has really makes it so much better.

  Ours involved the usual shopping, gardening, Lego building, videogame playing, wife fussing, food scoffing and other assorted amusements that kept us busy all weekend. Nothing completely out of the ordinary but so much better than the average weekend. We need more like that I think.

Follow up

  Just a quick follow up to yesterdays post. Want to guess which system in our product still has bugs open and is the one holding up the release. Yeah, the system belonging to the guy who does all the complaining and none of the actual doing. No major surprise there.

  On a happier note the evening with my wife yesterday after work was incredibly nice. Just being with her, being with her and relaxing together is how I want to spend the rest of my life. If we can do it somewhere away from the rest of the world even better.

Todays thought

  Just a quick thought as I have another busy day here at work. Or should I say a question really. Why do people insist on passing the buck on to other people so they don't have to do anything? Just something I've noticed here recently at work, people who will complain about something that is wrong, suggest something to do about it and the demand that everyone but themselves do that thing.