Curbside Confessions

Hey everyone, the new site I have been not-so-secretly working on is up. No more redirection to Vox! I will, however, continue posting from Vox, as the new site merely aggregates content from various RSS feeds. Expect new things to show up periodically, including an XNA section for my eventual foray into a series of how-to articles on the framework :). For now, I gotta run. The Coffee Crutch is closing and they're kicking me out!

I am posting from the 520 floating bridge to Seattle, on a King County Metro express bus. The bus has free mobile wifi; How awesome is that? The seats are far more comfortable than Trimet's, and the bus' appear to be on schedule far more reliably. To top it off, my fare was $1.25, instead of Trimet's $1.70 - $2.05. I wonder what they have that Portland doesn't? Sales tax, perhaps?

Anywho, I'm in the Seattle area doing grip work for a Microsoft party in Redmond. Apparently every year they hold a holiday party for the employees. This year it is taking place in the Building 42/43 parking structure. The whole thing has a really industrial vibe, with an elaborate set of trusses and LED's marking the entrance to half a dozen different color-coded hotspots. Most of the loungese will be bars, with one of them (purple I think) reserved for the catering. There will be four Xbox 360's in the Green Lounge.

I worked from 8pm-3am Tuesday and noon to 2am last night, for a total of 21 hours. Tonight I'll be working from 7pm to at least 3am tearing stuff down. The party itself apparently costs between $150,000-$200,000, and will be on from 2pm-6pm today. My mind spins at the thought of this. Two hundred grand for a four hour employee party? Incredible.

I'm in downtown Seattle now, have to get off soon. I'll post again sometime Friday, maybe with pictures of the place if my phone doesn't die on me again.

I'm hanging out in downtown Portland today, at the wonderful little Coffee Crutch, just up Yamhill from Pioneer Square. Its just a dollar for a cup of coffee, and you can refill it for free. I imagine some of their business model revolves around one feeling guilty about such a deal and making up for it by purchasing a pack of Tic-Tacs or a muffin, which they leave conveniently on display. Tempting me.

In addition to the usual Systepic stuff, I am revisiting my work on Project Theta. It is interesting uncovering work one has done before; I rediscovered a bunch of OneNote entries I wrote almost a year ago, many of which I'd forgotten existed. I think I'm going to pick up where I left off, which means I'll have to hunt down my copy of Dante's Inferno again. Judging from my notes, I was somewhere in the middle of the 9th circle...

On the gaming side, I recently picked up Zelda: Phantom Hourglass for my DS, and am having an absolute blast with it. I was initially a bit worried when I read the game would work entirely off of the touchscreen, but as usual Nintendo quietly backhanded my doubts away within minutes of my first gesture. All in all, the game feels like a lighter, more to the point version of Wind Waker; the same look and feel, less text. The world appears smaller, though I've only uncovered half of the sea charts, and explored less than half of one of them. Unlike Wind Waker, which split the world into dozens of small postage stamp charts, the entire map is split into just four large ones. These are all just initial impressions, so take anything about the game's size with a good slab of salt.

Greetings, world. I know, it has been ages since I graced Vox. There is much to explain.

For starters, I no longer call Salt Lake City my home. Matt and I decided that it was time to get out in the world and make a name for ourselves, so we have relocated to Portland, Oregon to found Systepic LLC. Our focus is industry-based penetration software, a method of development where we research what a business lacks in terms of software, and provide a solution to fill that need. I have written a much more detailed summary of what our company is about on the actual company website so if you are so inclined, feel free to check it out.

This of course means that I am no longer an active student at Neumont University. This is not the end, by any stretch; I fully intend on completing my degree. I just don't feel I need to do so right now. I have not 'dropped out' of college! To 'drop out' implies a general disinterest in the major, and a shift away from anything to do with it. Quite the opposite, I'm diving into the industry head first.

It has not been an easy run, getting settled out here. Initially we had a more stable source of funding and thought we would have a place in downtown Portland within two weeks of arrival. Now, it looks as though we'll be residing in Beaverton. It's not far from downtown, as Google Maps will show you. Also, there are a number of public transit options available that can land you right in Pioneer Courthouse Square for only a few dollars. This saves us hundreds on living expenses, as well. Still, I would have liked to be closer. The University District, ideally (good god is it expensive around there).

Portland has changed somewhat since I last frequented it, and not really for the better. Much of downtown is torn to hell due to construction for a new MAX Line. That's fine, but the crime rate in north Portland has spiked quite a bit because of it. There is a lot less car/walking traffic around Union Station, which has led to open air drug dealing, among other things. On 5th and Hoyt, where I used to hop a shuttle to and from Saint Helens back in my PCC days, one cannot cross the street without being...solicited. I truly hope that the situation improves once the construction is complete, but I'm no expert on how effective that will be.

A lengthy conversation with a Portland PD Sergeant revealed that a good deal of the trouble has something in common with irony. Apparently, whenever there is a spike in crime in an area, there is at first an equivilent spike in police reports called in by residents. However, as time goes on people stop reporting crimes, because they see them so frequently that it moves from extraordinary to commonplace. This doesn't help the local PD much, because their statistics show a drop, and less resources are allocated to help. It sounds like a pretty vicious cycle.

That's all for now, my laptop is running low and my steak soft taco is getting cold. By the way, the Yucatan Grill in Pioneer Shopping Center's food court is surprisingly tasty, for mall food.

I sometimes wonder if parties exist simply to sell more bottles of Pine-Sol.

I am convinced that, were it not for the lack of wireless security, one could run a startup in a coffee shop. Couches? Check. Tables? Everywhere. Power for laptops? Outlets abound. Power for the developers? Unlimited supply of coffee a few feet from the couches.

Startup Ground Zero

There are two general factors that determine the frequency of entries to this blog.

The first is free time, or as has been recently, the lack thereof. I've been chin-deep in eBay stuff for well over a month now (what the hell happened to April?). Things are going well. The project (can't talk about it on here, sorry) is coming along nicely, and eBay has been very impressed thus far. I foresee a lengthy relationship forming with them and Neumont, assuming I don't accidentally raze their product development department before I'm done. My other classes are going well, no complaints. The house remains in one piece and is relatively peaceful.

The second I will tell you when I figure out...what it is.

Over the years, I've determined that my brain seems to imitate what I'm doing at that particular moment. The other day Matt and I ran into Charles while shopping and, long story short, we now have a Ping Pong table residing in the garage. My long dormant skill at whacking a 40mm ball over a 9 foot table has been revitalized, along with the 'zone.'

All that matters in this world is the little white ball, speeding toward the left end of the table, my side. Did Kruzy spin it? I think he did; That bastard. I'll have to counter it. Oh, it's bouncing a little high, I might have a spiking opportunity here. Raise the arm, angle the wrist. This ball is going to have topspin from hell. Little point dispenser, thataway! Does he have time no I've caught him off balance. Score!

What just happened? What's the score, Tom?

I lose a great deal of cognitive capacity, here. My short term memory isn't exactly up to snuff, either. It fascinates me how flexible, how malleable the mind can be. It understands that reaction time, dexterity, and hand-eye coordination are king here, and does everything possible to suit that need, cognition be damned. In those intense moments, I am the dumbest person alive. Not a single intellectual thought bounces through my mind. Everything.

Stops.

...

And then it's back. A torrent of thoughts and images surge through my synapses, as though making up for lost time. I need to do my FAFSA. My watch is still broken. When does GameStop open tomorrow? Why aren't deaths in games more meaningful? Damage models suck in games. I'm thirsty. Where's my tea? Did I do my team report? Theta should have Modest Mouse in it. I could fix YouTube's bandwidth problems. I haven't blogged in a while.

Sometimes, I miss cognition-zero.

It appears I have a tendency to promise to post things. More accurately, promise to do so and then...not. I have a clear solution to this: I won't promise anything anymore. That way I don't set myself up for failure, see? It's called alleviating cognitive dissonance, which is a fancy term meaning "conflicting thoughts." Dissonance of the cognitive kind occurs when you do, or don't do, an action that goes against your core beliefs.

For example: chief among my tendencies (as far as Neumont is concerned) is a particularly troublesome habit of turning in assignments late. Ironically, this is usually because I tinkered with the concepts related to the paper/lab/whatever too long.

I'm one of the best around here at Managed DirectX/XNA, yet I received a D+ in the class. Why? Because I ignored submitting a couple of the labs. I was too busy scribbling ideas on my whiteboard, building complex and elegant ways to implement the various pieces of the puzzle, while most others in the class were turning in solutions that were 'good enough.' Their submissions were buggy, crash prone, impossible to reuse, inexcusably demanding on system resources...but they met the requirements of the assignment. That's fine, I can't argue with that. If the assignment doesn't demand elegance, it's perfectly acceptable to focus on simply meeting the requirements.

I can't do that. I would rather do it my way, regardless of how many times it's burned me in the past. I prefer this path because I can look back on what I've done and be proud of it. This is how I handle the dissonance. As long as I know that I understand the material at hand, I don't care what grade I get.

To a point, at least. Failing out of Neumont would be an expensive irony.

Its...a short post! I'm sitting in the cafe right now, at the Yosemite Bug Hostel. The bandwidth here s ucks, so I'm only going to upload one picture for now (it took forever to load the composition page).

Yosemite Bug Cafe

1 comment

This place is friggin awesome. I've got around 120 pictures and 40 videos of stuff around Yosemite, which I'll get up later.