Online Journal

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Sunday, December 31, 2006--New Year's Eve

So today, we were gonna have a party with my little girls, but it wouldn't happen until dinnertime, so I had a few hours to kill. So I spent the time working on SV:Fleets. I'm making quite a bit of progress, but not far enough to actually make the announcement yet.


So the party... Kellie, Little Vivian, and Quiet Robin showed up, as did Jeffrey and his sister Conifer (Connie). As per tradition, I took pictures with my little girls.

1. I took a picture with Kellie. Apparently, both of us blinked in that picture, but I almost managed to open my eyes in time for the picture.
2. Little Vivian cooperates (and poses with me and Kellie), but she doesn't look to happy about it.
3. Robin
4. I snapped this photo while no one was looking. Jeffrey managed to evade capture by being too far to the left. Franklin's on the computer. Conifer's setting up the GameCube, Kellie and Little Vivian are both watching her. In the meantime, Robin was the only one who actually notices my approach and blocks herself with her magazine.

So after dinner, I list all the games we could possibly play (board games and video games), and Little Vivian supports my suggestion to play Illuminati. Yay! But then she says she can't play because she has homework to do. That makes me sad. (However, later, when she decided to take a break to watch us play, her actions became justified when her mother showed up and reprimanded her for not doing her homework.) Also, apparently, I offered to buy her a copy of Illuminati, because apparently, she really liked the game. It's actually simpler than it looks. As for the actual game, it was over when Franklin got bored of all the in-fighting that was going on and donated all his groups to Conifer, thereby forcing her to win.

Then, we played a few card games before we finally went upstairs to play Mario Party 5 on the GameCube. (You know, the Mario Party I got for my 21st birthday party that we were supposed to play, but Lei had to leave early, so we never actually got around to playing it.) Long story short, Kellie won.

Then came 2007...
me: 10... 9... 8... 7... 6... 5... 4... 3... 2... 1... Happy New Year! ...okay, so what do you guys want to do now?

And then everyone had to go home. That made me sad. I might never see them again...

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 1) Total: 3


Good New Year's Eve!

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Saturday, December 30, 2006--Happy New Year's Eve Eve!

Today, I woke up and made French Toast for the family. However, because the stove is different (and possibly other variables I'm not aware of), it took me a few tries to get it right. Fortunately, the end result was still quite tasty.

Also, I did a little bit of work on SV:Fleets. I am slowly making progress.

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 4) Total: 6

Good Night!

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Friday, December 29, 2006--Today, I went and had lunch with Justin, Mark, and Ryan at a Persian restaurant, where we had koobideh.

Justin: Dwayne, I order you to eat more butter!
me: Yes master, I will eat more butter.

Afterwards, for some reason, we went to play basketball, even though Ryan and I don't know how to play basketball. As a result, I was struck down with a headache that took me out of commission for the rest of the day.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 4) Total: 7

Good Night!

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Thursday, December 28, 2006--Today, I went to In-N-Out with Nadia. It was really windy that day. I dunno how she managed to keep her hair in place whereas mine is blatantly messed up. Maybe it's because longer hair is heavier, and therefore, harder to move?


Also, I did some more work on SV:Fleets. It's funny, 'cause I wrote so much code, I was sure something was going to be blatantly broken. But oddly enough, everything seem to work perfectly. Huh, maybe I overestimate the complexity of my system, or else I underestimate my own abilities. Or maybe I'm just not doing anything complex enough to expose the flaws in my architecture. There's simply no way in hell it could be perfect, or even flawless.

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 1) Total: 4

Good Night!

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Wednesday, December 27, 2006--Today, I had lunch with Princess at Ariake Sushi. Therefore, Princess is awesome. Also, we took a picture. Therefore, Princess is awesome.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 4) Total: 5

Also, I've been inspired to make a new game called Solar Vengeance: Fleets, a Strategy RPG version of the original Solar Vengeance. Actually, I've been working on it since Christmas, but right now, I seem to be really getting my hands dirty with the nitty-gritty details. And yes, there will be network multiplayer.

Anyways, Good Night!

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Tuesday, December 26, 2006--Today, I went to lunch with Duckie at Fresh Choice. Apparently, she bought me a belated birthday present (a stuffed bear) and a belated birthday card, and I forgot her Christmas gift at home. So after lunch, I drove her back to my place so I could grab the stuffed duckie to give to Duckie. "Come to think of it, I think it would have been faster for me to follow you in my own car, 'cause now you have to drive me all the way back to Fresh Choice to pick up my car." "It's okay. At the very least, I get to spend more time with you."

Oh, yeah, and we took a picture with our respective stuffed animals.


Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 1) Total: 5

Good Night, Duckie!

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Monday, December 25, 2006--Happy Santa Day!

You know how all those Politically Correct nutbuckets say we can't say "Merry Christmas" because Christmas is a "Christian" holiday. It totally isn't! I mean, Christmas is about Santa Claus coming down the chimney and giving people gifts, and Santa Claus certainly isn't religious. (Unless he's Jesus in disguise.) But since Christmas contains "Christ", I guess the holiday needs a change of name. Therefore, from now on, (as a joke) I'll refer to Christmas as "Santa Day".

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 3) Total: 8

Merry Christmas to all, and to all a Good Night!

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Sunday, December 24, 2006--The day before...

I'm so upset today. Just today, I discovered that my backpack and my digicam and my digicam charger and my digicam USB cable are missing from my luggage. I know I packed them, and there's virtually zero chance that they went missing in my home, which means it must have been stolen between bag check-in and baggage claim. Lamed!

Since I didn't discover this until the last second, I had to scramble to fetch the family camera, which was running low on battery, to take to the Christmas Eve party...


So the Christmas Eve party was at Kellie's. Kellie and Little Vivian and Quiet Robin were there. So I went to take pictures of them. Unfortunately, since I had only fetched the family camera at the last second, it was low on battery. Therefore, the LCD visual thingamabobber only stayed on for, like, 3 seconds at a time. And since everyone at the party was too used to digital cameras, none of us thought to use the little scope. So we basically ended up taking pictures blindly without using the scope.

1. I randomly and blindly took a picture of Kellie because I wanted to make sure the camera was actually working. It was. (I think she was in mid-sentence when I snapped the photo.
2. Here's me and Little Vivian. This time, she was being very defiant (very atypical of her) and trying to hide behind her biology book (even though I told her to put the book down because she "wouldn't have time to do any studying tonight").
3. Robin, on the other hand, was very obedient today.
4. Me and Kellie.
5. "Take your hood off, Kellie!"
6. No, I didn't actually draw these letters in the Scrabble game.

Later, we played Illuminati. (Which looks complicated, but is actually pretty simple, evidenced by the fact that Little Vivian picked it up really quick.) Then, we played Bomberman. Then, we played scrabble. Then, we played Hearts. Then, Little Vivian had to leave. Then, later, I had to leave.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 4) Total: 5

Good Night, doods!

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Saturday, December 23, 2006--Today, I flew down to California. As usual, the flight was very, very boring.


But it's good to play a real piano again.

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 6) Total: 10

Good Night!

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Friday, December 22, 2006--Wow, so many people are on Christmas vacation already. Apparently, only, like, 4 devs came to work today, so we all went to lunch at Crossroads mall, and we all ended up getting off work before 5pm. (Except one...)

I also spent today packing for my flight down to California tomorrow. While I was at it, I cleaned the apartment (Yay! My apartment is clean!) and watched an episode of Doctor Who on Sci-Fi channel. Now granted, I've only seen one episode, but it's a pretty good show. I mean, it has to be. Would Sci-Fi channel import a British TV series and put it on their Friday night lineup if it wasn't good?

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 2) Total: 3

Good Night!

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Thursday, December 21, 2006--Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 2) Total: 4

Good Night!

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Wednesday, December 20, 2006--Today was not interesting.


Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 6) Total: 9

Good Night, Emma!

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Tuesday, December 19, 2006--Man, I can't wait for those Holy Days...

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 3) Total: 8

Good Night!

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Monday, December 18, 2006--Happy Birthday Stacie & Stephanie?!?


Between the Christmas season coming up and the fact that we're done with O12, I didn't feel like doing any work. Instead, me and some of the devs in the hallway went to Crossroads Mall to get some lunch at the food court. The Bulgogi place, however, was under new management, and the spicy pork just wasn't very spicy. Either that or my resistance to spice has increased, thereby making the spicy pork feel relatively less spicy. But I haven't been eating that many spicy foods lately, though.

But yeah. I ended up not getting any work done. Instead, I left work early to go do some last minute Christmas shopping and to get enough orange juice and milk to last me the rest of the week. (I will be flying down to California on Saturday!) But Safeway was out of milk. Apparently, they've been out of stock of milk for days, given the power failures and all.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 2) Total: 3

Good Night!

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Sunday, December 17, 2006--Today, I stayed at home and played Disgaea 2. I was reminded at how bad the AI in this game is. My level 70 wind mage managed to solo ten slug monsters ranging from level 100 to level 150 and gained 20 levels while she was at it. And the funniest part is, most of the time, when I was bombarding the slug monsters from long distance, most of those monsters just stood there and took it.


Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 1) Total: 7

Good Night!

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Saturday, December 16, 2006--Microsoft got its power back at 5am in this morning. I know this because the sound of a hundred computers turning on simultaneously woke me up. Still no power back at my apartment, though, although I did go back to take a shower despite the lack of light at the possibility that the water heater would not heat my water. (Although apparently, my water heater is gas powered or something. (Heh, I almost wrote "gauss-powered".))


Apparently, Redmond Towne Center has power now, so Michael and I went to the Thai place there to eat lunch. Then, we went to Uncle's Games (which apparently is a branch, because the Uncle's Games I usually go to is in Crossroads mall), and I bought a set of Illuminati, which Michael and I played at the office, as we still didn't have power yet.

Then, finally, after I got power, I played Dawn of War with the doods from the forums. Apparently, I've improved, although, as we noted, since I'm an Ork specialist, and Esc (the dood from the forums) is good with every race, when he plays Orks, I can usually outplay him. Apparently, I'm not very good at breaking through base defenses, though.

Then, I watched the new Battlestar Galactica (which I had missed yesterday because I had no power), courtesy of Abhishek. Wow, that's one hell of a mid-season cliff-hanger...

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 3) Total: 5

It's Good to have power again this Night!

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Friday, December 15, 2006--Happy Birthday Emma and Stacy!


Apparently, last night's storm was the worst we've had since, like, 1994, so I didn't have power today. I didn't have power all day today. I was about to go to work, hoping that they had power and therefore internet. However, I soon got a call from Michael who said that he got an e-mail from Microsoft (somehow) that said they had no power and therefore, the Redmond campus was closed that day. So instead, I picked him up, and we drove off in search of power. (Electrical power, that is.)

We finally found a small radius of power somewhere in downtown Bellevue. So we had a choice of eating at Subway or eating at Denny's. I had a craving for breakfast, so we opted to go eat at Denny's.

Eventually, we made our way back to the Microsoft Redmond Campus, where they had emergency power. (They had their own generator underground.) Which meant that they had emergency lights, but no heater and no internet. But apparently, the Microsoft offices are well insulated, so it was still warm. Choosing warmth over a comfortable bed, I decided to spend the night at Microsoft. (Michael on the other hand, opted to brave the coldness of night in the comfort of his own bed.)

Yeah, I'm pathetic, aren't I? Spending the night at work. Well, at least on the bright side, I wasn't actually working.

Heh, funny story. So while I was walking alone down the halls, I somehow got to thinking of every bad horror movie I've ever seen, where one of the characters is in a darkened hallway by himself, and a monster gets him. Then, Hai pops out of his office and scares the crap out of me. LOL, oops!

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 5) Total: 10

Good Night in the office!

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Thursday, December 14, 2006--There's a storm warning today, so we decided not to hit up the Gym today for fear of bad traffic and power outages.


Instead, we played Dawn of War. In the first game, we didn't do so well, as Michael and I got rushed by the comps and lost. In the second game, my internet went down (damn you, storm!) before the game really had a chance to get underway. After getting my internet back up, we played one more game, except this time, right as we're about to win, my internet goes down again!
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 6) Total: 11

gOOD nIGHT!

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Wednesday, December 13, 2006--I've finally lost faith in the W3C. I've already talked about it was on my Xanga. The short story is that, after discovering how there is no JavaScript standard, I realized that the W3C has been sitting on their asses, doing nothing, except for standardizing shit that's so old that nobody cares about it anymore. You know what I say? To hell with standards! They never did me any good. (Except when I was using ancient technology.)

JavaScript is lame. Server-side scripting is the way to go.


Other than that, I watched the conclusion to The Lost Room miniseries. They resolved the main plot, but clearly left a few loose threads so that they could make a full TV series out of it.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 1) Total: 6

Good Night!

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Tuesday, December 12, 2006--

More work, and then more The Lost Room.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 2) Total: 3

Good Night!

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Monday, December 11, 2006--Today, The Lost Room premiered on Sci-Fi channel. The premise is that there are these special Objects (which all originate in The Room), each of which have this weird special power. For example, there's a comb that can stop time. The main character's daughter (who's played by Elle "Dakota's Little Sister" Fanning) gets trapped in the room, and he needs to find a way to get her out, and along the way, he gets entangled with other people who are seeking the Objects.

It's a good show. The pacing is fast, but not rushed, and the story is complex enough to be interesting without being confusing. (I wonder how many people watched it because it sounded interesting, and I wonder how many people watched it because it stars Little Fanning.)

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 5) Total: 9

Good Night!

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Sunday, December 10, 2006--Today, I played Dawn of War with the doods from the forums. Well, just one dood. None of the others could make it, or something like that. But yeah. He kicked my ass in two straight games.

Fortunately, I reviewed the games and realized that I had the early game advantage (signified by when I took a bunch of strategic points from him), but instead of pressing my advantage, I sat there and just bunkered in. That and, I didn't really build any vehicles until it was too late. So yeah. Hopefully, next time, I'll do better.

Then, I played some Disgaea 2, cooked dinner, and watched TV.

Dice Roll of the Day: (6, 5) Total: 11

Good Night!

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Saturday, December 9, 2006--First, I played FF12. *12*I did the last Rank 5 Hunt, which was apparently a trap set by Ba'Gamnan. It turns out he was the "hunter-stalker" that everyone was talking about. Fortunately, I defeated him pretty easily.

Then, I did a few Rank 6 Hunts, so now I'm at a total of 32 Hunts completed.*12*

Then, I got bored of FF12, so I played Disgaea 2 instead. *dis2*So I learned from the strategy guide that if you stack a bunch of people and throw them all into the Dark Court, all of them earn Felonies. So I did that. My archer, "Duckie", now has a total of 74 felonies.*dis2*

After this, I'm gonna go work on The Hyperman Chronicles.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 1) Total: 6

Good Night!

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Friday, December 8, 2006--Happy 16th Birthday Little Vivian!

Not only that, but she accepted my friend request on Facebook. Yay!

Other than that, today was just another boring day, except there was a new episode of Battlestar... which is true most Fridays.

Dice Roll of the Day: (5, 3) Total: 8

Good Night!

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Thursday, December 7, 2006--Foo


Today was the Office office holiday party. I found out that every single girl in the Office office is already taken. Oh well.

Also, I played lots of Craps. I turned in two vouchers for 2000 credits total, and toward the end, I actually got it up to about 2500. However, tons of people gave me their leftover vouchers, and the guy next to me donated all his chips to me, so I ended up with a good 10k credits. They say the top three get prizes. If I don't get prizes, then I wonder what kind of pooling must have been going on with other folk?

Dice Roll of the Day: (3, 2) Total: 5

(That pays 3:2.) Good Night!

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Wednesday, December 6, 2006--So today, I finally learned AJAX. Wait, lemme back up a little...

First, I did one last thing with Javascript and DHTML: I made a new and improved spoilertext prototype. With the current spoilertext thing, it's just black text on a black background, and you have to highlight it to see it. In this new version, I take advantage of Javascript so that that you click on a link, and then it chucks the spoiler text onto the screen. This serves two purposes:

1. It works around an IE6 highlighting bug.
2. It makes it so that people who accidentally highlight the spoiler... well, now there's no spoiler to highlight until you click that link.

People who have Javascript disabled... well, what kind of nalfs disable Javascript in this day and age?

Then, I learned AJAX. It's kinda funny. AJAX stands for Asynchronous Javascript And XML, except you don't have to use XML. (Hell, in most applications, there's no reason to use XML.) So I guess I just use AJ. So yeah. To play around with AJ, I made this totally useless demo.


Also, the FF3 DS soundtrack is just awesome. Especially the bonus Black Mages remix of the final boss battle.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 5) Total: 6

Good Night!

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Tuesday, December 5, 2006--So today, I put the last feature on my Javascript Craps game. So now, it has all the features of a real Craps game, except without the felt and the real dice. The next Javascript project I did was to make a photo slideshow using Javascript to change between the pictures. Here is the prototype. I plan on improving this and polishing this and make it into a regular feature on my website.


Today, I did another Time Spiral draft in a field of 11 people. As usual, I ended up drafting red-black. My first pick was an Avatar of Woe. w00t! However, in the second pack, I got passed a Psionic Sliver, followed by a Sedge Sliver, both of which I took to bolster my collection of rare slivers. So then I decided to take some slivers because I had support from the rares. Then, in pack three, I opened a foil Magus of the Candelabra, a Sudden Spoiling, and a frickin' Akroma! Needless to say, I took the Akroma. Unfortunately, I wasn't in white, and I wasn't passed the necessary cards to get into white.

Anyways, here's how my deck ended up, red-black with a splash of blue (for the Psi Sliver):
7xMountain
7xSwamp
3xIsland
2xTwo-Headed Sliver
Goblin Skycutter
Sudden Shock
2xIronclaw Buzzards
Sedge Sliver
Rift Bolt
Orcish Cannonade
Bonesplitter Sliver
Ghostflame Sliver
Deathspore Thallid
2xSangrophage
Basal Sliver
3xPsychotic Episode
Vampiric Sliver
Cyclopean Giant
Viscid Lemures
Avatar of Woe
Psionic Sliver

Other cards in my card pool include Hypergenesis, 2 Goblin Snowmen, Kobold Taskmaster, and of course, Akroma!

First, I played against this dood who was playing every color except black. Anyways, the story is, he tromped me with Tromp the Domains.

Then, I played against Kaz, who had a pretty aggressive mono-white deck. All I can say is that Sacred Mesa (and its Pegasus tokens) really own.

Dice Roll of the Day: (1, 1) Total: 2

Well, Good Night!

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Monday, December 4, 2006--Today, I updated the Javascript Craps game to include place, buy, and lay bets.


Other than that, not much else happened.

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 1) Total: 5

Good Nights!

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Sunday, December 3, 2006--Today was basically just another FF12 day. Basically, I was just doing the Rank 5 hunts. I have 28 hunts cleared so far, and only 1 Rank 5 hunt left. Apparently, I just unlocked the "Ancient Man of Mystery". Lucky for me, I've read the spoiler, and I already know exactly who that is. And I'm saving him for last, dood!


After that, my day was pretty non-descript. Basically, I cooked dinner, ate it, and then I watched TV ...dood!

Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 6) Total: 8

Good Night!

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Saturday, December 2, 2006--Today, the doods at AO were planning to play some WarCraft 3. However, first, I needed to go buy some groceries. Then, on my way back, I realized that I needed to patch up my WarCraft 3 to the latest version. And then, I realized that I apparently forgot my WarCraft 3 CD in California. So much for that.

Today, however, was the Big Game between Cal and Stanfurd. Last year, Stanfurd sucked. No, they sucked worse than that. This year, they actually gave us a run for our money, which was pretty sad, really. (Fortunately, we still won, 26-17.)

The good news, however, is that UCLA (unranked) managed to pull an upset victory against USC (ranked #2 before this game). After a call from Justin, I tuned in when there were just less than 5 minutes left in the 4th quarter. UCLA was leading USC 13-9, but USC had the possession, and their drive seemed nearly unstoppable. Fortunately, in territory dangerously close to the endzone, with a little over a minute left, one of the UCLA defenders managed to tip the ball, and then catch it for an interception. Then, after that, it was basically the UCLA people stalling for as long as they could. When USC finally got the ball back, there were 13 seconds left on the clock, and the Trojans simply were unable to make the winning touchdown. Game Over. Bruins win. Down with USC!

Heh, now I can say I witnessed 3 of the last 4 USC losses. Also, according to Justin, I hate USC Football more than any UCLA person he's ever met, and USC is UCLA's rival! I think it all stems from Cal vs USC 2003, dood.

Afterwards, I played some more FF12. *12*I tried to get Ultima, but as soon as I stepped on to the upper layers of the Great Crystal, I got my ass kicked by the monsters there. Hmm... I think I should go do some hunts first instead. Or maybe track down some better weapons and/or armor.*12*

Dice Roll of the Day: (4, 4) Total: 8

Well, I'm a go play more FF12. Good Night, doods!

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Friday, December 1, 2006--I updated the Javascript Craps game. You now have Come/Don't Come bets as well as Pass/Don't Pass bets.


Dice Roll of the Day: (2, 6) Total: 8

Ooh, Battlestar is on in 5 minutes! Good Night, dearest!

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