morrowlife

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve with a little drooling problem. We’re working on babyproofing our house in anticipation of her next arrival – she’s apparently all over the place these days. We’re especially worried about the dog food. Not as much as the dog will be worried about it pretty soon, though.

It’s unbearably hot here in the loft tonight. Lousy air conditioner. We’ve had them in twice to try to fix it with no appreciable result. It’s been a warm day today, but it shouldn’t be this hot anywhere in this highly expensive house.

Spent the weekend camping (very nice little – tiny, actually – park with full hookups, lots of grass and trees in the single camping loop, and horseshoe pits but no horseshoes), replacing brakes (Loyal Reader Number One’s rear brakes were grinding their rivets on the rotors; we replaced them after a slight struggle with reseating the pistons), and looking at game engines (right now, I’m going with Delta 3D, which is open source, can be used on commercial applications, has excellent tutorials and at least passable documentation, and appears to have a lot of people developing with it and supporting it). Also going to church and Keeping the Sabbath Day Holy, of course.

Loyal Readers Numbers Five and Twelve should be here tomorrow. They’re really struggling with things down there in Sixtiesville and hope to find a new way to work the employment situation out. Something good will work out for them, but it sure looks hard to them right now.

Spent some time on the phone with Loyal Reader Number Three over the weekend. We’re still looking very seriously at the software company. We have yet another modest idea for a game (that makes about ten at this point) and want to see if a small team like ours can develop a PC game profitably. The jury’s definitely out on that point. I think we need to research how other small teams are making a living at it and either emulate them or find a jumping off point from where they are now. In any case, we need to find a game engine and try to make something simple so we can see how much effort it takes to make something at all. That field is very crowded, but there’s always room in every field for an excellent practicioner. I don’t know yet if that describes us or not. I know I have very good partners who will work their tails off for something we jointly find interesting and worth doing, and that’s the most important thing.

The other most important thing is to start doing something. Hence, I’m working through the Delta 3D tutorials. I read through several last night and am now going through them in much more detail, and I already understand way more about game engines than I did this time last week.

We’re still not giving up on the homeschooling applications, of course. I think that may be more of a moneymaker than games. Half of our partnership is highly interested in gaming, and there’s certainly more of a mass market, so we’re pursuing that. At the same time, we have a deep understanding of homeschooling and many of the challenges faced by serious homeschoolers, so we’re pursuing that too. I started getting LRN1’s time logging application uploaded to the server, but am having problems getting Rails to work. We need to look at it more carefully. If the ISP needs to have something running and they won’t, we may have to look at using our own server again. Dumb old Vizaweb. Don’t do business with them. Really.

Time for bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a French tribute to Napoleon. Apparently, he marched through pretty much every town in France at some point, possibly just so they’d erect monuments. Kind of hard to read and kind of crooked, but it’s still Great Art. I think we can all agree to that.

On the other hand, it’s definitely time to take some more pictures.

Wow! Did we get comments on yesterday’s posts! Here are some questions/comments and answers/comments:

Loyal Reader Number Five mentions that Loyal Reader Number Twelve loves Chocolate Malt O Meal. Very clever child. Of course, that puts my CMOM supply in pretty serious jeopardy. Where do you get yours, LRN5? It’s pretty hard to find around here.

LRN5 also mentions that more LRN12 pictures are coming. Send ’em in!

Loyal Reader Number Sixteen asks if we’re interested in receiving some Great Art. Of course – it’s always more than welcome. Send ’em in! I even give appropriate Great Artist credit. When I remember to, anyway.

LRN16 also mentions that my non-Loyal-Reader nephew Joe is getting married. Congrats, Joe! My former boss used to say, “A man doesn’t know what true happiness is until he gets married, and then it’s too late.” Of course, I disagree strongly with this statement. Just ask Loyal Reader Number Four for confirmation.

Anyway. I’m delighted for Joe and the poor young woman he conned into marrying him his lovely bride-to-be. Let me know if you’re looking for a Best Man.

I believe LRN4’s fourth-year hike is over by now. Hopefully, she survived. I suppose we might have gotten a call by now otherwise. Was it fun, LRN4? Did you survive?

No post tomorrow. We’ll be camping, and I don’t think they have free wireless internet service there. Maybe I’ll use the Wonders of Blogger on Saturday or Sunday. But don’t count on it.

Loyal Reader Number One’s car started making an ugly noise today when he steps on the brakes. Probably just time for new pads, but we’ll see, possibly on Saturday afternoon. Gotta keep the machine in prime condition.

I’m babbling. Time for a little more work, some ice cream, and bed. Have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.

Here’s Loyal Reader Number Twelve playing with her toys. The good news about that is that she and Loyal Reader Number Five will be here sometime this week! Hooray!

No post yesterday. I just got too busy. And what was I busy doing? This. The front page now links to WaterLogger. Of course, the application’s not there yet, but there are forums for it and the “About” screen has been updated too. Progress, however small, is still progress.

Traffic‘s been bad this week. Not much fun at all. There’s just one more work day left, though, and then we’re off on an overnight campout.

The boys are doing pretty well keeping up with their assignments for the week. Keep it up, Loyal Readers!

And speaking of Loyal Readers, we have a new one! Let’s all give a big Morrowlife welcome to Chris, our newest addition to the list over there on the right. As soon as he can find a picture to send me, we’ll have his Very Special Day.

But not tonight. I’m off to bed. See you tomorrow.

Here’s the carrousel out in front of the Hotel De Ville in Cannes. I asked Loyal Reader Number Two whether this picture had appeared on these pages previously. Neither he nor I could remember, so I’m putting it up in lieu of doing any research.

Short Shrift mode again tonight. I stayed at work until about 7:20 this evening, after having arrived at about 7:05 this morning. Long day, that. Fortunately, though, I accomplished everything I set out to do. But it was already late when I got home.

Loyal Reader Number Three, one of my esteemed partners in the Gardenville Software venture, weighed in on the Waterlogger project, offering his services. I gave him the partially-done logo to either complete (the hard option) or figure out how to do better (either the easy or the very hard option). I really like Loyal Reader Number Two’s design (I really like all of his artistic endeavors – he has true talent in that line, as does LRN3) – I’m just having a little bit of trouble getting it properly scanned in and colored without a bunch of ugly Gimp artifacts. Good luck, LRN3!

Otherwise, progress on Waterlogger is slow. I mentioned to LRN3 in an email this evening a saying I read recently: The difference between doing a good job and doing a bad job is much smaller than the difference between doing a bad job and doing nothing. Good quote. We’ve started doing something now, so we’re bound to have success. Just need to concentrate.

Loyal Reader Number Four left for Girls’ Camp this morning. Sadness reigns around the Secret Undisclosed Location. We hope she’s already having a great time and that the week turns out to be a highlight of her summer. And don’t worry, we won’t eat all our meals at restaurants. There’s no time for that. Maybe one or two, though.

And it’s time for Family Home Evening activity. We’re jacuzzifying, of course. See you tomorrow.

Here’s a campground road somewhere in Virginia. It was raining that day. May 26, 2003, to be exact. It pretty much rained every time we went camping in Virginia, but we always had a great time anyway. It sure was hot and humid, though.

Friday’s here! It was my “on” Friday, so I worked a full day and accomplished a bit. Took the Miata, which wanted to overheat. I can seem to stop it if I either turn the heater on full blast or turn the air conditioner on full blast. Any theories, Loyal Readers? I have just one, and it’s not the thermostat, which would be unaffected by the a/c. I think it has to be the cooling fan. Which is unfortunate, since I don’t really know how to fix that particular problem. Off to the shop it must go.

Otherwise a quiet day, as are most. We’re going to the stake Pioneer Day celebration tomorrow morning. Maybe I’ll remember to bring my camera and capture some Great Art. Or maybe not – I remember hearing somebody tell us we need to be prepared to get wet. And my camera is definitely not prepared for that.

Anyway. I need to do some work on the new website, so have a great weekend and I’ll see you on Monday.