What I Did Today
Hey, here's something cool: Ceej updated the Spies search engine to work on the new server. So if you want to do Web-style searches on my journal - and on everything else on Spies - you can go there to do so.
I've also been reorganizing my topic threads to make them, I think, more usable than before. Eventually I will continue to add entries from the past year to the list.
And yes, I'm still slowly working on the redesign. I'm not as dedicated to this stuff as some journallers seem to be when they sit down to do it.
One of the nice things about my job is that I can sit down and write WebObjects applications just for fun, since my mandate in part is to use the app like a customer would, test whole workflows and get fairly sophisticated things up-and-running. On Friday I started writing - yes - a Bridge app, to allow people to play Bridge via a Web browser. It's still in fairly primitive stages, and I've already found a few things, so it's worthwhile already. (It turns out I also raised an interesting philosophical question - one of those "this isn't really how we intended the app to be used, but it's clearly useful, so do we want to consider extending it to make this even better/easier?" issues. Always nice to have door open for future development...)
With this release cycle winding down, I should probably touch base with the developers and see if there's any testing they think needs to be done in these last few weeks, which they feel has been overlooked ore neglected. No one's been saying anything, but then, they're probably a little more concerned with fixing existing bugs than with finding new ones...
Oh, and the guys at work seem to be more excited about my buying a new car (which, of course, hasn't happened yet) than I am. Patrice (Ben's boss) has twice asked if I've gotten the new car yet. I think this is partly motivated by the fact that I'm often the guy on the team who has a car convenient for driving us to lunch, if we choose to go out, and they're all pretty aware of how aged and creaky my car is. But it's funny nonetheless!
And, really, sitting home for an evening is rarely a bad thing. For instance, I finished reading the 30 issues of Thunderbolts which I bought.
The story really takes off when the villains' plans come to fruition in #s 11 and 12, leading to a rift between the really villainous villains and the ones who decided they liked being heroes (with one caught in-between the two extremes). It goes on from there, with a number of the heroes on the run.
It's a pretty compelling character drama. The characters are not really that deep - you could argue that some of them are pretty one-note - but they play off each other very effectively, and writer Kurt Busiek keeps the action moving along, contriving some situations to move the story where he wants, and keeping everything nicely balanced between triumph and tragedy. Sadly, I believe Busiek will be leaving the series soon, and it's hard to envision Marvel - who have had trouble developing great talent in the 90s - replacing him with anyone nearly as good. (The series is also notable for having had the same penciller - the solid Mark Bagley - for nearly the whole run.)
I also got to watch the Giants get pasted by the Diamondbacks, and I played a level of the Starcraft: Brood War expansion. So, that's a pretty successful evening.
And, perhaps best of all, I've been highly successful over the last three weeks at keeping my credit card bill down. Unless there's some expense out there that I forgot about, I should be able to just about cut it in half from last month. Which would of course be terrific; if I can maintain this sort of discipline - and I was able to do it for several years when I started at Epic - I should be able to afford an apartment up on the peninsula without any problem.
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