Tone Parsons

Welcome to the wonderful world of Monday!

Well, Monday may not be so wonderful, but I did have a good weekend! My wife and I attended the 2006 holiday party for my company on Saturday night… and they threw one hell of a party! For the first time in a long time, there was plenty of parking, the food was served hot (and it was good), and the band didn’t:

1. Suck
2. Play nothing but Jimmy Buffet tunes

Though seeing the lead singer’s pink thong didn’t do much for me… she must have weighed about 300 pounds (133 kg)…. but man, could she sing!

On Sunday, we finally decided on the Christmas^tm gift that we would get for each other. The JVC TH-C60 DVD Digital Theater System. I’m sure there are much better systems out there, but we’re not rabid audiophiles, so this should work just fine for our needs (it better… it’s 1,200 watts total… 200 watts per channel). The 5 disk DVD system is pretty spiffy too…. it plays just about everything you can put on a CD or DVD with your computer. It’s also got a USB port on the front to read MP3’s from my thumb drive.

Spiffy!

Of course, we ordered it from Newegg…. so it will most likely be here by the end of the week (yes indeed… I do love them!). If you’re planning on getting me the Samsung 46″ LCD HDTV (LN-S4695D) I posted here, it would go perfect with this system! (Please, please, PLEASE get me that!!)

This morning, of course, sucked. Yup… Monday with a vengeance. It was a tropical 17° (-8.3° c) when I left the house and they’re forecasting a blistering 30° (-1° c) for a high today. Sure… it may be colder someplace else, but last nights fog froze into a nearly impenetrable sheet of icey goodness on all the glass in my car. Good times scraping that crap off!! 🙂

Yes indeedy, I haven’t posted since last week, and I don’t have anything to write about, so it’s time again for a “filler” post.

But fear not, gentle reader, for I am the master of pulling a post directly outa my ass.

We’re doing Secret Santa at work this week. The objective: give a few small gifts (4 – 5) in a week and a half period (inexpensive items, in the $1 – $5 range), then a large gift at a luncheon at the end. The goal: don’t let them figure out who you are.

So… you become a cubicle ninja. Sneak in silently, leave presents, vanish without a trace.

So far, so good for me. My Secret Victim hasn’t a clue who I am. Of course, it helps that she’s in training all week and isn’t in her cubicle most of the day.

My cubicle got hit this morning. My Secret Santa left me a paper mailbox full of pistachios and chocolate.

Pistachios are roasted in the shell and delicious. The reason they’re roasted and sold in the shell: to burn off calories while you open them. If they came without shells, we’d all be fat bastards in a hurry (because you’d just shovel them into your yap… they’re soooooo damn good!)

But I digress….

I purchased all the small gifts for my Secret Victim over the weekend and will strike her cubicle again tomorrow. I’m also planning another sojourn into the shopping madness that is the mall to attempt to find the perfect “final” gift. Hopefully I’ll locate something quickly as to minimize my proximity to the unwashed masses.

Oh… and in totally unrelated news: the Clan [PXLTHG] website is nearly complete. I have a CSS tweaks to do yet, but I’m pretty happy about how it looks. If you play Battlefield 2142, look for us online!

And there you go… I made a post (which is better than some people are doing).

This is a Discovery Channel program covering the history of video games from the beginnings of Atari to the Nintendo Game Boy.

It’s just over 46 minutes long (it’s the full, uncut episode) and is very interesting if you have the time.

It also makes me rather cranky. Back in 1980, I got my first computer (the Atari 400 with a whopping 8K of RAM!). I was programming in basic and by 1982 I had written several fun games for the TSR-80…. the largest of which was a Dungeon & Dragons style game.

It generated a random map with random monsters and treasure and supported up to 4 players (it was a turn based game). It had text at the bottom of the screen giving descriptions of each room and generated a map of explored areas above.

It was also a lot of fun!

My friend Dewayne and I thought we were sitting on a gold mine if we could only sell it. Those dreams were dashed when I read an article in Dragon Magazine (the official D&D magazine) that stated they were in no way interested in computer games (because that wasn’t the focus of the game, and it never would be).

We dropped the project, and the floppy that it lived on was eventually erased to make room for another program.

Other computers I’ve owned over time (prior to the 286): The Kaypro 1 and the Amstrad PCW 8512.

Of course, my current video card has more memory and a faster GPU than my first 9 computers combined.

Today is my 4th day in the new department at work.

Of course, every day so far has been focused (in part, or in the case of yesterday, wholly) on issues with the old department. Today’s looking like more of the same.

Things I’ve been doing for my department: Flex 2 has become my new best friend. For those who aren’t familiar with Flex, it’s a platform for publishing flash based applications (in the swf format) that use ODBC for data mining. It’s pretty.

I’ve also been looking into the CSS for an extremely large internal website and will probably have to rewrite a good chunk of it.

Oh… the good times (and lots of link goodness)!

Other news: I just can’t get enough of the Caribou Coffee chocolate mocha granola bars. OMFG!! These are SO INCREDIBLY GOOD!! I currently have two boxes in my cube (as I’ve eaten the other 3). Seriously…. if you like coffee… buy these! They smell incredible when you open the wrapper and taste even better. It’s like crack… with granola!

And finally: Christmas^tm is only 17 days away. Don’t forget your favorite webmaster while you do your holiday shopping (there’s a list here…. I really want the Samsung!!)