Just days shy of their fourth birthday, the child is currently getting Pac-Man eaten repeatedly because, “they peel like a banana peel. 😀” They now have started imitating the sound it makes. This is what a positive education looks like. 😉

A sure sign a team is too isolated and has completely lost the plot: A *driver* package for hardware more than a decade old weighs in at 485M and is labeled ‘minimal install’. 🤦‍♂️

I arrived home from picking up lunch. Immediate thought: “Hey, that’s cool: the NeighborHawk (our neighborhood red-tailed hawk) is hanging out in my backyard.” It took me a while before another thought arrived: “Uh oh… We may no longer have our backyard bunny.” 🙁

In honor of Mardi Gras, as a cultural celebration (nothing religious), I thought I might have an appropriate meal. Apple Maps let me search for “red beans and rice” nearby: only franchise takeout. After “jambalaya” failed, I tried again… Food truck in LA, twice as far from here as New Orleans. 🤦‍♂️

RIP: Carter Lipscomb 😢😢😢 I have known Carter for more than 30 years, and he was one of my best friends in the game industry. I am heartbroken. www.gamedeveloper.com/business/obi...

RIP: Roberta Flack (1937-2025) Does this mean that Don McLean will now be arrested for his 1971 performance at the Troubadour? 😉

It’s weird discovering a sub-TED Talk video based on a project you did a quarter century ago, especially when said project is barely a career footnote. On the other hand, my (solo) coding work was referred to as “a team of programmers”, so there’s that. 🙃

“My boss said I have to drive you wherever you want to go.” “Yeah: Bottom of the ocean, straight to the depths of hell.” “Done. I already set the GPS for Florida.”

Sometimes, randomness plays out nicely, literally: Unbeknownst to me (until I heard it) the very last song in a randomly chosen playlist 8 hours in length (131 songs from 14343 options) was… _Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye_, by the Vogues, which ends with a wistful “Goodbye…”

Last night I had a vivid dream about choreographing a great ball: - individuals danced the Mutex (one at a time) - groups danced the Semaphore - it was quite an Event No prizes for guessing what kind of code I am working on. 😉

Elon Musk is not a Federal employee or a political appointee. DOGE is not a real department. None of their activities are legal. This is a coup. The Republicans in Congress are willing participants in it. At what point do Democrats in DC get that and start acting like it? It’s not the price of eggs!

“I would not tell them too much,” said Holmes. “Women are never to be entirely trusted,—not the best of them.” I did not pause to argue over this atrocious sentiment. – Arthur Conan Doyle, “The Sign of Four” (1890)

Tip #1: Adding a teaspoon of water to your egg mixture will make your omelet fluffier. Tip #2: A “fluffier” omelet is not necessary desirable.

Need a restroom break. Stand up, walk across the length of the house, and half its breadth, climb a flight of stairs, walk down a short hallway, and sit down. Apple Watch does not register this as standing. 😐 Further, a couple minutes later, Apple Watch insists that I stand up. Sorry… 😳

I have strong nostalgia for the “old days” of programming. In practice, however, using the Delphi editor today just doesn’t measure up. 😉

A little Choir music for your enjoyment: youtube.com/watch?v=BYG3...

I have more game programming experience than anybody else in the world (prove me wrong 😉) and I am available immediately. blog.gamecraft.org/2024/07/25/h...

We need a hero.

I made toast. The bread in the nearer slot was slightly too well done (and the other was perfect). I turned the heat dial down a bit and put two more pieces of the same bread in. The bread in the nearer slot was perfect, but the bread in the other was burnt. Now I am questioning everything. 🙃

A *real* grilled cheese sandwich is cut diagonally with the spatula used to flip it on the griddle. 😉

So, when do I get to do it my way? When do I get to feel like Sid Vicious felt? When do I get to sing My Way?

Visual Studio has added the most annoying message: “VCR102: Browsing operations around this macro may fail. Consider adding it to a hint file.” That is *so* a YOU problem, not a code problem. “GKS101: Consider fixing your tool, or remove messages describing its shortcomings.”

‘Tis a rare First Edition, indeed, that would explicitly print “Second Edition” on the title page. 😐

The oldest indie game development company in the world turns 42 today! sophsoft.com Worth a follow? 😉 #indiegames

Podcast ad for LiveNation (paraphrased): ‘Listen to all this live entertainment we have to offer in your area…’ followed by the *exact* same event (“Two Friends at the Detroit Fillmore”, whoever that is) repeated 3 times with identical intonation. Translation: “We have nothing at all to offer.”

Development steps: 1. discover your venerable static library is not using precompiled headers 2. implement PCH to dramatic 16x build speed increase 3. wonder why you didn’t earlier 4. update library in current project 5. find answer to #3: library no longer links properly 🙁 6. contemplate 🤔

This ham came with a good price and two sets of cooking instructions: Cook at 325°… or 326° covered, flat side down… or uncovered (no orientation specified) for 10 minutes per pound… or 15 minutes per pound to an internal temperature of 140°… or 130° … or (per label) just eat it cold. 🤦‍♂️

To be fair, Microsoft hasn’t added a useful new feature to Windows in years, either, but at least the OS doesn’t seem to deteriorate with each update. As long as I can continue to ignore the (Nigel Tufnel-esque) pleas to upgrade to Windows 11, everything is fine and stable.

So, what bright spark over at Apple decided that putting an ‘erase disk’ option *immediately* under the ‘eject disk’ option on the action menu for removable drives was an improvement? Watching the slow decay of macOS is kinda sad.

I don't know the lyrics to the German Christmas carol, _Ihr Kinderlein, kommet_, but it really doesn't matter because the only thing that goes through my mind listening to it is... "Blackadder, Blackadder..." 😀

The holiday song, _What Christmas Is to Me_, by Evan & Jaron, wins the prize for the laziest rhyme ever: They rhyme “It’s a Wonderful Life” with “it’s a wonderful life”. 🤦‍♂️

National Weather Service has issued a “snow statement” (two, in fact) for my area. Asking for attention with a “snow statement” without actually mentioning anywhere how much snow was expected is useless. “Hey, it’s snowing and the wind is blowing.” <smh>

Thirty seconds ago, the cat was purring ferociously because I was about to let him go outside. Now, the cat is purring ferociously because I let him back inside. (It is 21° F / -6° C and snowing.)

And we’re back down… And we are back up again. 😉 (It would be irresponsible to spend time on Bluesky instead of fixing the hardware failure.) I have never had a Cat-6 cable die, but that appears to have been the cause, though I will be nervous until everything remains functional for a week or so.

Filed under “Murphy’s Law”: I closed down the office for two days, Thanksgiving and Curmudgeon Day, returning early today. When I start the same processes I do every other day of the year, I find the server connection had been severed early Thursday, so no mail or websites for those two days. 🙁

Observation on perspective: When flossing, there is one gap between two teeth that seems fine when moving in one direction; going the other direction, it always slices through the dental floss.

One from the vaults. No reason. 😉 blog.gamecraft.org/2023/10/22/u...

A large number of the personalized spam messages that I receive are pitches from companies to build an app for my business… … which builds apps. 🤦‍♂️

There is no satisfying schadenfreude for Unity issues after our company chose not to go that direction years ago for fear of exactly what is happening. Instead, I feel hurt that fellow game developers, especially those who can least afford to extricate themselves, are caught up in the mess.

_I Really Haven’t Got the Time_ (1967) by the Moody Blues is a fun departure. Written and sung by Mike Pinder, it sounds less like the Moody Blues and more like the Guess Who to my ears. www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aaaj...

Dilemma: It is the opening to _Limelight_ by Rush… Do you play air guitar or air drums? Can’t do both at the same time.

It’s a question we ask all the time.

I just realized that my music collection includes exactly one movie soundtrack for each year from 1977 through 1980, and John Travolta stars in three of them, having not done a movie in 1979. It makes me wonder if he was offered John Savage’s role in Hair first. 😉

That brief moment of joy when The Onion references current events and you think that maybe it was satire all along, followed by the crushing reality that, no, this is actually happening.

I just received a credit card offer with a potential 35.49% interest rate. 😳 We are definitely into dark alley, break your legs if you don’t pay, territory. 🦈

Today’s (attempted) email malware attack is from “Pay Load”. 😳

Have you noticed that the level of email spam has gone WAY up since the election? That is no coincidence, methinks.