Said to my co-worker while coding today

"It's just going to be easier to do this the hard way."

Bowling!

I went bowling with my work last night, we had about 30 people there. I did very well. I recall that the few times I've bowled before I was around 100 or so. I played 3 rounds last night. I scored a 148, a 111, and a 160! Pretty good for me! They were calling me a sandbagger! =p

Cornucopia

It seems like I've gotten used to sleeping a normal 8 hours again. Last night I was out until about 11pm, and I had to wake up at 5:30. So I only got about 6 hours of sleep, and I was feeling it this morning!

It used to be that I would stay up until 11 or 12 every night, and get woken up in the middle of the night a couple of times, and still wake up at the same time. I've certainly been enjoying my sleep; go to bed any time I want, not have to deal with someone waking me up in the middle of the night. I'm getting spoiled! =p

This past week has been busy at work. My copy of "The Sims 2" arrived a couple of days ago. I got a great tip on The Frugal Gamer that it was on sale at JC Penny online (of all places) for like 22 bucks (while it sells for over 40 bucks online usually). I've never played "The Sims", so this is pretty much wholly new to me. I've completed half of the basic tutorial, and the interface seems pretty clean.

I also made a total STEAL on Call of Duty on Columbus day. EBGames was having a sale, where this 30 dollar game (which for a LONG time sat at nearly 60 dollars IIRC) was on sale for a bargain basement price of 10 bucks. This is an unbelievable deal, because this game has garnered many GOTY awards and is still a new game. It's also got a thriving online community and my clan has a division for it. I'm interested in online play, but from the demo I know that the single player is a blast as well.

My climbing subscription ran out on the 10th. I only went climbing twice last month, so it stuck me for 30 bucks a shot. Ouch! I'm still trying to decide if I should pay to play or go monthly again. I guess it depends on if I can find a regular climbing partner. So for the time being, I'll be in pay to play land.

Tonight everyone at my office is going for pizza and bowling. We're all leaving early and hitting Colony Pizza and then we're going somewhere to bowl. Another late night for me, and I'll certainly be missing cell group tonight.

Speaking of missing, last night I was supposed to scrim with my clan against some other clan, but I didn't know if it was that night or not and though the scrim was at 10pm (I should have been back by then) I didn't make it home until 11, so I missed. I sent an apology to Isaiah when I got home after I verified that it was indeed last night.

My co-worker Mike is doing well with VB. He's learning the basics of how to pass variables to functions, and how to use control structures. At the beginning yesterday, he was stuck in "GOTO LABELNAME" land, and by the end he was passing variables to functions/subs with the best of them =) He used VB to create a form that would edit some registry settings on a remote machine based on his input (location, machine name). I spent some time doing some VBA myself yesterday, in Access. I'm supposed to streamline a basic data import process.

We've got this spreadsheet with a bunch of data ordered through it. I wrote a macro like a year ago that will reformat this into a "flat" format and dump it to a CSV on a shared drive. This CSV is then linked in Access, and the data imported into our Sybase database. I made a function yesterday that first checked if there were things that would be left out of the join, and then display how many there were and give the user the option to import as is, display the items that are left out, or to cancel. I did it because I know in my mind, it's the users responsability to keep that crap in sync. Yet, 3 months from now when 2 or 3 of these things are left out because of typos or trailing whitespace or something, it will be me who will have to deal with it. Best to just integate that part into my process. But I know I will most likely forget, so I wrote the macro so I wouldn't have to remember. Not a macro, per se. It's a subroutine in it's own module.

I've really been enjoying my audio book. I'm listening to A Game of Thrones again, and I'm impressed at the readers ability to infuse emotion into the characters. He really does a great job, and his character voices are great. I remember the story very well, so there are no surprises for me this time, yet I enjoy it all the same.

I've been wondering about the definition of "droll" lately. The dictionaries and online resources don't really give me any example of what "droll" humor is. As an aside, I remember playing a game called "Droll" on the C64 which in retrospect seems a bit like Donkey Kong, though perhaps it's just the format of the level I vaguely remember.

My daughter is coming to visit me this weekend. We'll be celebrating her birthday. She turned 5 a little more than a week ago, and I have some presents for her here. She was very keen to know what they are, but I am adamant that birthday presents should be a surprise. I've got a new winter jacket for her (that's actually a 4 part system, shell, fleece, etc), a "Water Baby Bathtime Wiggler", and I think something else. My parents also sent some gifts for her, and my grandfather a card.

This weekend, I plan taking her to the Lyman Orchards Corn Maze. I've also invited Brad and Srini and Jaya to join us. The corn maze should be fun. I'd also like to pick some apples. We will most likely go to Chuck E Cheese as well, and perhaps a movie if something is playing.

Climbing!

It's been a couple of weeks since I've been climbing. I got a one month subscription at the gym for 60 bucks on 9/10, and that was the last time I went climbing. If I go 4 times a month, it makes sense to get a monthly pass. I've been slacking!!

I made plans last night to meet up with this guy I met on the connecticutclimbers Yahoo group, George. I didn't know what he looked like, but I told the gym manager/owner that I'd be meeting George there and he directed me to where he was climbing, because he'd already arrived.

We climbed until my arms were shot. Started off on a little 5.5, then moved to some 5.7's and 5.8's. My fingers are obviously still not tough enough to handle little pinchers, but I was able to hold my own. In fact, I didn't fall almost at all. There was one climb (5.8+) that I simply couldn't get more than 5 feet off the ground on. I don't think that it's entirely because I was blown, either. I just have to puzzle it out.

George just started climbing last year after visiting Yosemite (or another big name park). He did well. His footwork needs practice, and he still has to learn about how to mentally approach the climb. He saw me do it a couple of times and commented that he didn't have that "chess-like" approach to mentally planning out the next few moves. I spoke with him about the virtues of it, and I saw him mentally going over the moves. That should help him with his ascents in the future.

Climbing is half physical, half mental. I am physically "weak" where it counts as it stands; my fingers start to hurt on crimps way too early, and my hands don't have much endurance (compared to how I used to be!). But mentally, I'm still pretty strong. I mentally play out the climb in my head before I actually start it. I pick out akward points and how I can deal with them.

Also, if I'm heading on a climb that I know I will probably fall on a couple of times, that I won't just "walk", I prepare myself shortly beforehand by breathing. Those deep, steady breaths that focus the mind and relax the body.

I love to climb =) I really do need to go more often.

Trite details of my weekend

I went to see Napoleon Dynamite today. It was a fun, clean movie and I laughed a lot.

I also went to church, and then on an unplanned 2.5 hour hike up to Castle Craig starting from Hubbard Park. I found a driftwood walking staff along the talus I was hiking on. Without fail, if a trail seems to lead out of the way, I will take a "short-cut" even if it's bushwhacking. Eventually, my "short-cut" lead me to the scree along the water's edge. That's where I found the walking stick. The driftwood was very light, and smooth to the touch. When I was done with the hike, I leaned it against the marker at the trail head.

What I didn't do that I should have done was mow the lawn. I had ample opportunity to do it, but procrastinated and before I knew it darkness had fallen. I didn't mow last weekend either. And by the time I get home during the week, it's already dark. Fortunately, the grass isn't growing very quickly anymore, so this weekend I'll be able to hit it.

I tried to get lilo runnin properly, but for some reason the LiveCD I was using wouldn't recognise /dev/hda at all! It saw /dev/hdc, but that's just my DVD burner. So until I can get a LiveCD to recognise my hard drive, I'm in trouble. I did use an old Gentoo 1.4 LiveCD kicking around; perhaps a newer one wouldn't give me that trouble. I've never had that problem before. Here's the wierd thing: The LiveCD recognises /dev/hda, but when I chroot into /mnt/gentoo, /dev doesn't even list it!

I:
mount /dev/hda3 /mnt/gentoo
mount /dev/hda1 /mnt/gentoo/boot
mount -t proc proc /mnt/gentoo/proc
chroot /mnt/gentoo /bin/bash

And that's it. Maybe I should look at the documentation again.