Half a year between entries once again. Shock and awe for anyone who knows me.

Cliff's Notes of life in G-funk Land (and website updates) -

Dynasty Warriors 5 is still my favorite in the series. I wrote this retrospective love letter to celebrate its 10-year anniversary.

Here's another fond look back on Milon's Secret Castle, a childhood favorite game ( Read more... )

The last time I posted a journal entry, I was in the middle of recounting my November 2013 trip to China. Then came the polar vortex and a longstanding torpor through which I ground onward and eventually got reinspired.

I made a good amount of novel progress, partly fueled by some excellent critique from quufer. I got addicted to Instagram, bookmarked ( Read more... )

I got the job. Not just a job. The job. The high end programming position I applied to at Penn State, whose listing sought a driven and creative problem solver. The one with an interview I prepared for by mainlining '80s tunes in the Kern Building lobby beforehand, and in which I shed my suit jacket and flexed for a room full of staffers in ( Read more... )

The involuntary sabbatical continues. My first job prospect went to someone else, but I had a fantastic interview for a different one. There's more out there, and I continue to seek. Something will eventually come up Milhouse. At least I'm happily entrenched in Hobby Land in the meantime ( Read more... )

Let's get the worst out first. I got laid off. My reviews were stellar over four years of employment. I just happened to lose a game of Contract Musical Chairs during a time of uncertainty in the realm of government R&D funding. I have contacts, I have references, I have excellent prospects lined up - including an interview soon to come with a ( Read more... )

What I've been up to lately ( Read more... )

My final word tally: 17,000 and change. Which doesn't include the leaps I made in planning, both in substance (notes, detailed brainstorming) and getting the best ever handle on my writing process. As I mentioned, just forging onward doesn't work well for the narrative I'm going for. Instead I need a somewhat iterative combination of the following ( Read more... )

Sandy came. Sandy went. Sandy largely passed us over. The spousal unit went out in the gusting wind to redirect our rather ineffective downspout away from the house, then resumed playing video games. I spent most of yesterday with the Suspended Piano of Dreaded Impending Power Outage hanging over my head, and I was convinced I would jinx it by ( Read more... )

The annual Grange Fair rolled around last week. It's no ordinary rural gathering of livestock, crafts, and any food that will maintain its constitution in a deep fryer. It's a settlement - literally. Families pass down their tents for generations, and every year is a reunion as neighbors watch each others' kids grow up to take on the tradition ( Read more... )

Last week, we doubled the RAM in my computer and swapped in a faster hard drive. After three successful data migrations, from OS upgrades to moving all my business onto this current machine, OS X decided to put on its best trollface and only copy over some arbitrary subset of my profile. Repeatedly. Which kept me up past 4 a.m. on a weeknight until ( Read more... )