A dash of the family in NYC

 Life in General  Comments Off
Nov 062011
 

Had dinner with my cousins Vicki, Natalie, and Cindy, my Uncle Paul and Aunt Linda, and a few friends of Vicki’s tonight. Vicki is currently in town to run that whole marathon thing that you might have heard about on Sunday, and the family and friends decided to fly out to support her. Of course, nobody is really sure where she will be at what time, and since she’ll be running with about, oh, 45,000 other people, it might be tough to spot her in the actual race, but hey — we are there in spirit!

I went out to join the group for dinner tonight, and what made this particularly nice was that I hadn’t seen Cindy or Natalie at the wedding last month, so this was a nice substitute. We caught up on the latest happenings with them and their own families, and also the bizarre news that Natalie was told her Driod phone would cost $650 to get replaced, despite her having insurance on it. Uhm, yeah. I told her that she received faulty info from the store clerk she had talked to.

Something else of importance I learned tonight is that it’s daylight savings time again. Heh, I had completely forgotten about that….

Well, this just means that I can stay up an hour later! Woo!

Then, tomorrow, I need to catch up with the family to figure out how we’re going to find Vicki in the throng of humanity running down 5th Ave., and afterward I’m off to my touch football playoffs, while they seek out the nearest Packers sports bar. I may join them later, but depends on how sweaty I wind up being. I also think I might try to touch base with them on Monday night, as well; hopefully it works out, as I won’t see Cindy and Natalie again until well into the next year.

But for now, onward to finish my laundry.

 Posted by at 12:29 am  Tagged with:

Home from another World

 Life in General  1 Response »
Jun 292010
 

Walt Disney World, to be precise. It was a fun trip, visiting with the family, despite the fact that I lost every single Disney Trading Pin I bought there, which was about $50 that went down the drain. Oh well — at least I didn’t lose my niece’s pin, which would have been far more sad. I think it’s just a sign that I should stay away from the whole pin aspect.

I took many, many pictures in many, many locations. This basically means that I will be spending many x4 hours uploading, balancing, and organizing them. But, hopefully it won’t take too long, and I will be able to post several on the blog.

Now, I need to work on catching up on a wide array of things, and thus shall be off. Onward!

 Posted by at 9:45 am  Tagged with:

Ah, the old “Didn’t study for the exam” dream….

 Life in General  1 Response »
Dec 282009
 

A few nights ago, I had one of those dreams where you didn’t study for the test, but this was a little different.

Two “famous” teachers from my North Olmsted K-12 days (they were those rare breeds who were very tough, but all the same, were universally loved by the students), Mr. Forgosh and Ms. Cornell, were teaching the class that I was in, and asked me to be the first of class to give an off-the-cuff oral report on plants, which was going to count for 95% of our final grades. In this case, I actually knew all the info, but couldn’t decide the best way to start. Also, when giving this report, I was supposed to sit in “the chair,” which was an old electric chair (unplugged, mind you.) I remember being told to get on with it.

“Okay, okay, I’m in the chair…,” I said as I sat down. But then I leaned back a bit too far (maybe expecting it to be attached to the floor), and fell over backwards in it. At which point I said, “…which needs work.”

Laughter followed, even though I thought my comment wasn’t that funny….

Then I had one of those odd moments when, even though you are still in the dream, you are also aware of other things happening around you: I heard my father ask, “Where’s your uncle?” to my nephew, who replied that O was still in bed.

“Go tell your Uncle Matt to get his butt out of bed.”

So I wasn’t surprised by the sudden attack by my 7-year old nephew as he crashed on to my bed. Ah, holidays at the homestead….

And thus the cards begin….

 Life in General  Comments Off
Dec 142009
 

I received my first Christmas card over the weekend, from my Uncle Jim and Aunt Sandy. This made me think that perhaps the spiritual precursor to the friends lists of MySpace and Facebook is, in fact, the Christmas mailing list. In both cases half of the people on are those that you haven’t seen or talked to for years, and there’s probably also some people that you don’t even know.

Speaking of Christmas, I’ll be off in about an hour or so for the IGDA Holiday Party; I said I would show up early to see if they needed some volunteers, which might be a good way to see what the crowd is like. I’ll be curious to see how many people show up that I might recognize. And I now have my trusty business cards, so I’ll have to see if I find any reason to pull out it for a “networking moment.” I’m still skeptical that I’ll be able to find something until the new year, but I’ll have to see if I can’t at least have some things moving before then so I can start the year running. Hmm.

Welcome back from Wisconsin

 Photos, Stuff I Made  2 Responses »
Nov 302009
 

So I have returned from Wisconsin — the flight and train ride back was smooth enough, and I was delighted to return to find that my apartment had not caught fire, nor was burglarized. I spent a few hours unpacking, running some errands and taking care of some rather important things (call you say “Unemployment Benefits,” kids? Ah, I thought you could), and now have to get to work on some various projects.

But, I thought I’d share this family photo that I took last night, just because I think this is the first full “family” photo that we’ve had taken in, well, ever, really.

(going clockwise from top left) Dad, me, Casey, RJ, Erinn, and Mom

(going clockwise from top left) Dad, me, Casey, RJ, Erinn, and Mom

For non-shutterbugs reading this blog, this was literally a last minute affair: my mom was not home until Sunday, and then we had to wait until late Sunday night after my sister’s birthday dinner and after my sister’s boyfriend and his kids had left. The good news (for my dad, especially) is that I managed to get it right on the first shot, which was as much of luck as skill, really.

For the shutterbugs, this was taken with a tripod at 800 ISO, 1/10 shutter speed, and 3.5 f-stop. Yes, this means that the impossible happened and my niece and nephew held still longer than 1/10 of a second. Keep in mind that there is no lighting set-up at work here aside from the regular lights of the house. What really helped was that I took the photo in RAW format, and was able to then make some important adjustments for the incandescent lighting. Then, in Photoshop, a little bit of tweaking with the Levels tool to bring out the darker areas, and Viola! A rather nice image all the way around, I think.

I also got some shots of RJ & Erinn, as well as my sister and I with the kids. But this one is sort of like getting a photo of Lorenzo Music; very rare.

Happy Thanksgiving

 Life in General  Comments Off
Nov 262009
 

Hope everyone has a safe and enjoyable Thanksgiving. I have a number of things that I’m thankful for — the fact that I’m home for some damn fine free food is certainly one of them.

 Posted by at 3:17 pm  Tagged with:

The Day Before The Turkey Stood Still

 Life in General  Comments Off
Nov 252009
 

Currently I am enjoying the comforts of the parents home in Wisconsin, although already I have had to try and figure out what is wrong with the home wireless network (I think I resolved the issue, but I have a sinking feeling that it’s not going to last long…). I flew in yesterday afternoon, on a plane trip that — yet again — actually left on time and was pleasantly uneventful. I am honestly starting to get worried about this; after years of travel mishaps and high drama, I am constantly waiting for something particularly off-kilter to happen.

In any case, a few things I wanted to catch up on:

First, as some of you may know, the Browns lost to the Lions in a very bizarre fashion. Several people have mentioned that it was the worst way for them to lose, but obviously these people have forgotten about the “Helmet” incident from a few years back, when the Browns lost on opening day to the Chiefs because a defender threw his helmet after the play, drawing a penalty, keeping the game alive, and moving the Chiefs within field goal distance, which they scored from. But what has surprised me the most of commentaries this past week is the belief that “Oh woe is us, we are obviously at rock bottom because we lost to the Lions!” This, to me, shows that a number of these people really have no clear grasp on the current state of the Browns, nor the Lions.

Okay, so first all, The Lions have already defeated another team, so it’s not like they were winless going into the game. But far more importantly, I honestly wasn’t expecting the Browns to win. Why? Well, the Browns had no offense. Sure, you can make fun of the Lions for all their losses over the past 2 years, but so far this year, the Lions have had a much, much better offense than the Browns have had. Remember, before going into the game, the Browns had only 5 offensive touchdowns. A favorite stat cited by many people was that the Saints defense had more touchdowns than the Browns offensive. Hence, I was honestly surprised to see the Browns offense score as much as it did. What’s that? It was against the Lions defense, you say? Well, last I checked, there were better offensives than the Browns who have scored fewer points against the Lions defense.

So yeah, it was a hard way to lose the game, but last I checked, this was really one of the few times that the Browns have actually had a shot at winning in the whole season thus far. I do agree that Quinn and Daboll still need to proof that this was not a fluke (and I think that Daboll is going to be likely gone next year unless the Browns score 30+ points every game from here on out), but hey, it was a nice change of pace to see some creativity. The direct snap to Jamal for the 2-point conversion was probably the best play of the game.

Anyways.

Tomorrow shall herald in the call of family and grub, and it shall be welcomed with open arms and doggie bags. I have to admit, as well, that over the past month, I have eaten better than I have since I entered the ranks of the unemployed. This is largely due to the visits home, as well as John’s brief stop-over. I will have to get back into the “moldy bread and rainwater” motif soon enough, so if there was ever a time to eat too much, this would be it.

So let’s catch up a bit

 Life in General, Work  Comments Off
Nov 102009
 

I haven’t been on LJ for a bit, and let’s face it, a large part of that is that WordPress is, honestly, the cool new toy I got; it’s the Buzz Lightyear to LJ’s Woody. After I work my way through the “new-ness” of WordPress I might start posting more on LJ, but I admit that the ability for me to be able to upload and basically control all of my own content, as opposed to relying on other sites, puts the 300-pound gorilla — or even more awesome, Mr. T — in WordPress’ corner.

Beyond that, though, that past few days were spent in idyllic Wisconsin for my cousin’s wedding. A good time was had (that will eventually be a Fireside Chat Log), but now it’s back to the dirty business of finding employment in the gaming industry. And yeesh, this is not for the faint of heart. Today has been productive, at least, with a couple more resume’s sent out, an attempt at getting a meeting arranged, and (still to come) a follow-up phone call.

The personal game project with The Wizard and Curly is likely going to be the main focus for the rest of the year, though. Whereas when job-hunting you’re often at the mercy of the unknown-yet-perfectly-nice folks in the respective HR departments, at least with our own little project is something that I have much more control in; in fact, I spent a fair amount of time this past weekend working on (gulp) math equations — dear God, what have I become?!

Actually, I need to work on yonder equations some more. It’s all about balancing out the units, and while it looks like it may work, I really want to see these in practice ASAP.

In other news, with the Tampa Bay Bucs having won their first game, it’s not surprising that the Browns are now, officially, ranked as the worst team in the NFL. And really, how can you argue otherwise? As I’ve stated many times before, it’s not that they Browns are losing, but are so utterly non-competitive. Current rumor is that Quinn takes the field again on Monday Night. Frankly, I do not believe that it will make a difference, given that the same issues will still exist in terms of the rookie WRs, the right side of the line, the lack of a running game, and Brain Daboll’s highly-suspect playcalling. Browns fans now find themselves in an odd position: do you hope that the Browns continue to implode so that the case for a “strong, credible football” man gains enough momentum that Lerner is forced to let Mangini go if that football guy demands it, or do you hope that the Browns actually improve and win a few games in the remainder of the season, which will ease the pain, but weaken the case against Mangini? (For the record, I would like to see what Mangini can do if he just focuses on coaching (he had more success in NY with that approach, after all), but that would require a football-guy hire within the next week or two, which I am doubtful will happen).

Oh, speaking of football, I missed the last game of my rec football league, and have heard that while they had some nice plays, they lost, and again did not score any touchdowns. Given that I was the QB for most of the season (and we lost all but 1 game, and only scored 2 offensive touchdowns), I admit that I feel better in knowing that it was not just me. :)

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