Clever wife

  My wife is very clever. She may not know the exact details but she knows what should be done in pretty much every case. Take my problem of slow internet connection with my PS3. Since getting a new wireless router the wireless connection to the PS3 has had problems. Other devices in the same room don't have a problem, something is just up with the PS3 wireless. We have an old router so my wife suggested that we use it as a link to the main router. Good idea so I tried it with some custom firmware on it but unfortunately the router was too old to use the firmware. Skip forward to last night where a small wireless bridge is hooked up to the PS3 and zoom, internet speeds are six times what they were and no packet loss. All my wife's idea and working 100%. Now it only takes a reasonable amount of time to download over a Gig of data rather than maybe getting it all downloaded overnight.

Too new/old

  I tried using our old wireless router last night to set up a wireless bridge for my PS3. When we got that router it was the newest there was and did everything that wireless routers at the time could do. Now though, god knows how many years later, it is too old to put some custom firmware on it to use as a bridge. Technology can be annoying like that, it can either be too new to use all its features or too old to be useful. Finding the right piece of equipment and period of time to us it properly can be a risky proposition at times.

  Take our iPad, it was amazing when we first got it and now after two more iterations of the iPad it is still damn good. It can't run all the latest stuff that is available for iPads but does everything we want from it really well. However Apple in their wisdom won't be releasing the newest version of iOS for it when it comes out later this year. Barely two and a half years later and the operating system for it is being obsoleted. Kind of scary when you think about it. Any nice new features that come along we won't get. Not that we would want them from the sounds of it but when you get left behind you start to ask do I need the new stuff? More often we should ask, what stuff do I need then get those and not just get stuff when it first comes out in order to have it.

  Another post of random things going on in my mind that I can bore everyone to death with brought to you by my struggle with old hardware and new firmware last night. That and wanting to get a decent internet speed on the PS3 so we can stream more video on it and not take far too long to download stuff from PSN.

Thinking

  I was thinking about stuff today that I had been talking about with my wife. I'm trying to convince her that she is normal sized since she is. She is not fat and never will be with her lovely figure. To prove my point I'm going to post a picture of her that I took on her birthday while she was not aware of it. Naughty of me but it shows her at her best I think.

  That is a beautiful woman, no arguments or doubts. I just wish she knew the truth of it as well. I could have proved my point by posting pictures of other women and tried comparisons etc. but I think this proves my point. Everyone who sees her doesn't think she weighs what she does and she needs to not fret over it so much.

  I will never stop telling her she is beautiful since she always will be. As a man I know I could probably never convince a woman to get over her insecurities but I can keep trying for the rest of my life.

Saying words

  I find it hard to get the right words out of my mouth sometimes. I get in to a situation in my head where I simply have no idea what to say. I know I have thoughts and ideas in my head but never can express them without sounding like an idiot. Maybe they are idiotic ideas but I have no way of knowing that with them stuck up there.

  Sometimes I think that my ideas are also obvious so why bother saying them. Any intelligent person could come up with the same thought process so there should be no need to explain it to them since they must know it already. Basically there are a lot of reasons why I end up saying nothing in most situations. This is normal to me where I'm the quiet one in the room, only occasionally speaking up so people know I'm still there. Then again I do try to say something meaningful when I do and not just drivel on about nothing.

  With my wife though, when I'm relaxed, I can drivel on about something that interests me to no end. I love telling her about things I like. I know I can always talk to her I just can't always express myself clearly when I do :| .

  Anyway, trying to avoid doing too much more work today so I don't get completely tired by the end of the day so I think I"ll find something to distract myself with while still looking busy.

Another day

  Today has been yet another one of those days where work never ends. You get them, all of a sudden sometimes, when everyone wants to know something right now or needs you to look at something right away. You don't get a moment to think and jump from one thing to another without even a pause to catch your breath.

  Still the thought that through all this my wife and I could move to a new house in a different part of the country keeps me going.

  We saw a couple of films this weekend, both fun ones to see. Abraham Lincoln vampire hunter was cool. Not sure why people complained that it took itself too seriously, what did you expect? Just because the premise is silly doesn't mean the subject matter has to be silly as well. It tried its best to make logical sense and fit in with actual history. The other one was cool too, two people coming together knowing the world is going to end and how people would react in that situation.

  After we watched the films we talked about what else coming up that we would watch. Given that we could barely remember what trailers we had seen was not a good sign. There really isn't much that takes our fancy. The new spiderman seems pointless given the others exist. Only I want to see Batman. No other good or anticipated films are on our radar at all. Weird really, there is usually something worth seeing eventually.

  Anyway, I'm off to write some code and make a feature ten times simpler by doing it the right way in the first place. Seems if you do it the right way enhancing what you have already done becomes part of the basic functionality itself and not an enhancement to the mess of code you did in the first place.

No sense

  I did some gutter cleaning this morning and scraped my knuckles up a bit doing so. After coming back in doors and telling my wife it was done she says to me "Why didn't you wear your gloves?". I just stood there think, yeah why the fuck didn't I? Why did it not even occur to me to do that and not get so many scratches. There I was digging out leaves and crap using two small trowels when I could have been digging in with protected hands.

  I worry about myself sometimes that I just don't think of these things. They completely go over my head while I'm busy working out some silly detail and not seeing the obvious solution. How many more things in my life do I miss like that?

  Yay for my brain.

Nothing much

  Not much of importance going on at the moment. Sure there is potential but overall things are fairly quiet given the interesting and important events that have happened over the last few weeks. With major birthdays and potential for future moving house and career stuff going on we are in a waiting pattern at the moment. Nothing can be done right now other than plan for what could happen and push the right people at work to make those things happen.

  I think I really need for September to be here. By that time several things would have happened:

1) My company will have been bought out by another company and work prospects and moving prospects improve.
2) My birthday would have happened.
3) Our wedding anniversary gives us another reason to celebrate being together.
4) Borderlands 2 will have been released :|
5) The work on the house next door will have finished and nobody has bought it.

  Please note those items are in no particular order. Now I just need to go poke the right people again here at work.

Nothing is forever

  Talking to my wife this morning and she is having problems playing a game on her phone. It is one that requires a connection to a server that the company that produced the game runs. However every time she starts up the game it crashes outright. To prove it wasn't the fault of her phone I tried loading up the game on my phone and got the same result.

  I know a lot of new games now have some form of online component. They talk to some server somewhere and either have a requirement or optional section that needs to talk to that server. Once that server is no longer available or not contactable the game becomes unplayable either partially or totally.

  This is the dilemma my wife has. She likes her game and other than an easy method for stopping outright cheating there really is no need to talk to that server. I'm sure my wife would be perfectly happy to play the game without having to contact the servers they run.

  The long term problem here though is that those servers aren't going to be there forever. Once that happens this particular game will be completely unplayable. After all the money she has spent on the game it is going to be frustrating to know you will never ever get any enjoyment out of it again.

  The really annoying thing is that even games that don't require a server will be like that some day as well. They all run on some form of hardware that either will die or won't be able to hook up to a display that can accept the video signal connection or something like that. Unlike books/films etc making sure a game can always be played is a really hard problem to solve.

  In the end though I just wish people would make their shit work. Making parts of my wife's game time sensitive and then through no fault of her own making her miss those time requirements is downright annoying.

Hope and stress

  I've been a bit stressed lately. I want to move us away from where we live for a variety of reasons but making it happen financially is not an easy thing to do. It has been something I've been struggling with for a while and not been healthy for my wife and I since it annoys her and winds me up.

  Yesterday however a glimmer of hope came through. The company I work for and have worked for the last 18 years is being bought. The company buying us has lots of money, lots of engineering positions and a main office on the east coast of the country. Basically if I arrange things right once the purchase goes through I could solve our problem of where we live.

  Given the stupid amount of pressure on us engineers at the moment to produce the product that we did and are still improving, that became the last hope for the company to find another company willing to buy out the whole company I work for just for that product and the engineers who work on it is gratifying. It is also hopeful in that it will provide better opportunities for me to support my wife and I.

  Somehow I always manage to get through these things. I don't know how but eventually something unexpected does come along. I try my best to plan for things to happen but quite a lot of the best things in my life have been those unexpected surprises that work out for the better in the long run.

Bad food

  I have a real craving to eat some bad for me food at the moment. When asked what I wanted for dinner the other night I answered that I would like a calorie packed omelette from iHop (and why does firefox think omelette is a spelling error?) Over the weekend we had bbq ribs and tater tots. Today even though I have a yummy home made cheese and tomato sandwich and malt loaf I'm craving a bad for me burger.

  I really want these kind of bad foods right now and I don't know why. They are bad for me health and nutrition wise (although nutrition could really be classified as health I suppose) and yet even though my brain knows this my body is telling me to eat them. It is becoming a battle of wills I feel like losing since it is easier to give in. Is my body trying to kill me or it is just too much like hard work which is something I have bugger all enthusiasm for right now?

Nut grossness

  Ok, this is going to be kind of weird and gross but maybe my body is trying to tell me something. I had leftover stir fry for lunch yesterday and it had noodles, chicken, bell peppers, onions, mushrooms and nuts in it. Very tasty all round, even the nuts considering I really don't like a lot of nuts and only eat a few types in a few meals. Anyway on to my point, as I was sitting on the toilet this morning and happened to glance down at my deposits I see that the nuts on the stir fry have passed right through me without being digested at all. Now is my body telling me I don't like nuts since it can't absorb them? Do they really go through mostly untouched and be little lighter coloured nuggets in the larger brown mess? These are questions that should be answered since inquiring minds want to know.

Not long enough

  Last night was spent like most evenings at home, sitting on the sofa watching TV and playing games. As usual Fudge insisted on coming up to join us, unless he is sleeping somewhere he absolutely has to be with me and my wife. Boots does this too when he wants attention and the girls less so. Thinking back though we've had the boys for almost 12 years now. In my childhood I've never had a pet for very long so knowing our boys have been around that long is kind of weird.

  Our longest living pet as a child was our dog Charlie. He almost made it to five years before dad found him collapsed in the garden one evening. Other than him we had a budgie or two (I really don't remember) that lasted all of 2 days. Some goldfish made it to a year I think. There was nothing else though.

  Having some animal companions in our lives for this long has been so good for us. They adore us at all times, especially Fudge. Seeing them now you can see both Boots and Fudge are not as sprightly as they were but they both still have all their senses about them. True they may be a little dense sometimes but what do you expect from a cat, especially one as set in his ways as Boots. He is the equivalent of an OAP who demands things exactly as he has always had them and wants it right now damn it.

  The thing is though I don't want our time with them to end. In theory they could live to 20 or older and other than Boots' hyperthyroidism which has been cured they have both been healthy. Thinking about life without them is hard, they are irreplaceable to my wife and I, they are effectively our children. Furry, sometimes smelly, never going to move out children but children never the less. I just wish they could have as much time as we do since they are enjoying their lives so much.

  So to Boots and Fudge, hang around some more huh? We love you both so much. Daisy and Lucy, we look forward to having a long long time with you as well.

Leave us alone

  The past year or so has been quite nice at home. Our fucking noisy neighbours next door buggered off somewhere and haven't come back. Now it seems though that the bank or whomever has the title to the house is trying to tidy it up. Please please please don't make it a livable in house people. It has been so much better being quiet in our house, my wife and I really couldn't take any more of noisy neighbours.

  It stresses my wife out so much that it drove her to desperate measures. That stressed and worried me. It was not a pleasant situation to be in at all. Now the thought of that coming back is panicking us. To be honest without ripping out and rebuilding the vast majority of next door I don't see why anybody would want that house. Hopefully any prospective buyers will be so put off by the state of the house they will flee in terror as they should. Either that and me and my wife are moving out in to our caravan.

Where I Am

  I was talking to my old friend yesterday who lives in Australia. We were talking about a few things and as can happen the subject of videogames came up. He was looking to get a game, buying it purely digitally online via Steam. Because of where he lives he ends up being  charged almost 50% more than if I were to buy the very same game. We both pay no taxes on the purchase and the digital data we are given is exactly the same down to the last bit. So why, just because he is physically somewhere else, does it cost more for him.

  For physical goods I can see the need to charge slightly differently for some things. It can be harder to get that item to that place depending on where it is coming from and to. For digital goods though, assuming you don't take in to account the actual internet connection required, there is no difference regardless of where I am. Yet various forms of digital goods are restricted, priced differently and mostly just not available based on where the physical person actually is. Newer technology companies and forms of digital goods generally don't restrict like this. The older ones, TV, music, films etc, apply these arbitrary restrictions that don't make sense in the modern world and the sooner these older companies based around physical object business models realise this the sooner they can progress and actually make more money.

  The world of digital PC game sales has proved this over and over again. People will buy something, for a set price, the world over and for the vast majority of users not pirate it, even those games without DRM. Heck even the software I write is fully available for anyone in the world to download (except those of you in Iran, North Korea and other countries the US government has export restrictions on) you just need fairly specialised hardware to run it on.

Well that didn't take long

  I've been back at work a day and a half now. After being at home and on holiday with my wife for 2 weeks I'm back in the office. After just that short amount of time I'm missing being physically with my wife so much I feel totally lost right now. I can't concentrate, I really don't want to do work and I just want to be at home with my wife. I have zero motivation at the moment. Even the thought that I get paid to be here is not enough sometimes. If we could live without me getting paid I would do it in a heartbeat.

  Bah, talk about morose huh? Still there is always a bright side to life. My wife, our cats, playing videogames, that kind of thing. There just happen to be many obstacles in the way. Me working gets in the way of being with my wife. Cat poop gets in the way of enjoying our cats :| . Stupid huge patches taking 2 hours to download (and then tell me it needs another 400 Meg patch, argh) get in the way of game playing. You get the idea.

  Add to all this that my body is a little all over the place right now with changing time zone, lack of sleep thanks to my nephew (seriously, I slept 11 hours Saturday night), too much work piled up while I was away and still trying to get the huge amount of money together for us to move and life is a bit too annoying right now.

  So before I get too fed up I'm going to have lunch and some me time. Hide away in a meeting room away from my desk and just relax. Then I might be able to get through the rest of the crap here and other stuff to deal with before going home and relaxing. Such a mixed mood at the moment.

Got it all done

  Well I'm back after our holiday for my wife's birthday. The vast majority of my plans actually worked and it all came together. There were one or two things that didn't quite go to plan but that always happens, overall though it all worked out. The house, dinner, birthday cake, presents, stuff to do and see. I would say the only problems were my mother in law (no surprise there) and our 17 month old nephew being a noisy attention whore.

  Still I'm glad it all worked out and my wife got mostly what she wanted (other than sleep and getting a cold...) I tried my best, spent some money and we had a good time away together (when it was the two of us). We saw lots of good things, wondered why the hell anyone would chose to live in Toronto and had a really good meal out at a great restaurant on her birthday.

  Personally I'm relieved that it all worked out, I was so worried about getting it done that it kind of stressed me out a bit. I didn't want to disappoint my wife since I had to show her how much she means to me. She needs to know and feel how much I love her and this was a way for me to do that. Now I just need to convince her that she is not old but merely middle aged at most :| .