It is hard to believe we are already a third of the way through January. I had been planning to post about an overly busy weekend at the beginning of December. I also planned to post about the busy end of year deliverables that piled up. Then again I hoped to post about all the different Christmas parties I went to. When I finally got time to breath, I found my time filled with a return to the free MMORPG that I'd been playing with some of my friends. By then, New Year's Day had come and gone, and I was back at work setting an aggressive bug fighting schedule. And here we are on January 10th and I'm blogging for the first time in a month, so let's make it a good one.
The first weekend of December had Jenny and I driving all over the Greater Lansing Area for an assortment of dinner parties. Saturday night was spent in Grand Ledge, and my first visit to the home of my pastor,
Frank Weller. He had invited us and a number of other couples to a dinner party and informational meeting for a program called Joshua's Men. This program is a year long leadership training course. I look forward to participating in Joshua's Men in 2009, and I'll have more to say about it once it kicks off. Sunday night was spent in Williamston, for the annual
P.I. Engineering Christmas Dinner. This year, the party was held at our new warehouse space, which is currently being rented by a textbook binder. It was a delicious dinner and and a fun evening touring our newest facility. Monday night was spent in Lansing, at Jenny's work party. The Elmwood Nazarene Child Care party was a potluck dinner, and was fairly awkward for me. I only knew one other couple at this party, and I was feeling ill that evening. Lucky for me, Jenny knew in advance, and didn't parade me around in front of all her coworkers. Three completely different dinner parties, one busy weekend.
Early December was spent delivering our first Mainline Simulator. The project director was on site with the customer, installing the hardware. I was in the office in Willamston, sending through software and content updates from myself and the other members of our team. Overall, it was a successful install, but there is more to be deliver on the software and content side in 2009. The rest of December was spent fixing bugs for our first Train Yard Simulator customer, and then cloning that code for the training facility they resold our project to. I also had to set up a generic Yard Simulation for a brand new customer looking to spend some of their 2008 budget. Finally, just before the office holiday break, I had to make a copy of the source code for our Escrow Lawyer. Five big deliverables, one busy work month.
Friday, December 19th was a terribly snowy day. So snowy, in fact, that every district in Ingham county was closed. Snowy enough to change the plans Jenny and I had to change our plans for celebrating our 4th Anniversary. We also had to reschedule the Getchel family Christmas feast from Saturday the 20th to January the 3rd. Christmas Eve brought a half day of work, the Jardine family gift exchange, and Christmas Eve Candlelight Service at
SLCC. On Christmas day, I spent time with a sick Jenny at home, my parent's house and her parent's house. She found the most comfortable place to nap at each place. So many Christmases, so many fun times.
I spent three whole days in my pajamas, on my sofa and playing
ShadowBane. ShadowBane is a free to play Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Some close friends introduced me this fun game. It has an open world to play in, an aggressive Player vs Player format, and highly customizable character classes. I had neglected playing with my friends for a few weeks and logged back on to find our guild had captured our own city. I spent those few day catching up and enjoying myself. If you feel so inclined, you can download the free software, send me a message and I'll help you get started in the game and induct you as a member of the Keepers of Dawn.
Jenny and I spent our New Year's Eve celebrating with our small group. The Cohoons, the Batdorffs, the Simmons, and all their kids stayed up until midnight to witness the turning of the calendar and the dropping of the ball. We filled the lead up to midnight with Wii gaming, Apples to Apples, Darts and deep fried anything. It was a great evening that spilled over into the next day with Bowl games and Board games. Great times with close friends.
Friday, Janurary 2nd was a bit of a write off. I had to return to work, but had very little to do. Most people spent the day cleaning up their work stations and work spaces. I took the opportunity to defragment my hard drives. The following Monday, I met with the project manager and discussed all that needed to be done for our Mainline customer. He suggested i set the schedule for the tasks ahead. I set an aggressive one that forced me to make the changes and improvements to our software that had been stewing around in my brain for a while. I spent most of the week on track, but encountered some un expected hold up late in the week. Next week should witness me getting back on track and completed on schedule.
All told, I ended 2008 pretty busy, but I wouldn't have it any other way. Life has been good for Jenny and I. 2009 looks to be just as busy and better than ever. I have new opportunities to learn and grow. I look forward to grabbing on to each of those opportunities and becoming a better programmer, a better husband, a better leader, and a better man. And maybe, just maybe, I'll blog more often.
When I started fostering this idea last year, I looked at a couple of different technologies. Microsoft has recently released XNA, it's development platform for the Xbox360. The technology looks sound. Many homebrew developers are already publishing on the platform and making notable amounts of money. While the publishing mechanism seems straight forward, I lack a few key elements in the development process. Namely, an HDTV and an Xbox360. Maybe next year.
Another technology I looked at was the Facebook platform. I like the social interaction that Facebook brings to the Internet. This option was more appealing because it offered more new languages to develop in and new challenges in deployment. Items I still need to publishing on this platform includes setting up a directory for web serving and perhaps an extra charge for a stable IP address and a domain name.
Of course my dream platform is the impressive WiiWare. I've always loved Nintendo products and attempted to get a development kit from them for my high school programming independent study. I was shot down then and told that development kits only go out to recognized developers. While the concept of WiiWare would seem to denote a shift to the small guy like 2D Boy and Semnat Studios, one must still go through Nintendo to get the development kit. Looks like I'll have to put this one on the future list.
