Codemunkee's Blog - 2old2play

My Name Is

Its been just over a year since my last blog post, and I've been away from the site for a long time, figured I should reintroduce myself.

I'm Codemunkee, a 35 year old IT Director from the boogie-down Bronx stuck (I mean, living) in Central North Carolina. Been a gamer my entire life, and a developer/architect for over a third of that time. I spend a lot of time in RPGs on just about any platform (I have 4 different platforms at home, not counting my PC), and currently playing Mass Effect and Jade Empire.

I also play Halo 3 and COD4, along with Forza, but I suck at them. But I like the competition. As long as I'm competing in a field of equally crappy players!

So, where have I been? A lot has happened over the last year or so.

Mrs. Codemunkee got pregnant again, and this time it stuck. We're 7 months in now, due in early March. Its a boy! So with that has come getting the house in order. I've become a pro with a mitre saw and other power tools that I just used to suck at (hey, I'm a guy from NYC, what do I know about home improvement?). We've had a new everything dropped into our home, and its looking great. The baby's room just got done and I did a damn good job if I say so myself.

I'll be wrapping up business school in August; the entire year has been spent doing homework just about every day. On a nice long break now so its also a good time to catch up on the stuff I missed gaming (which is why I'm STILL playing Jade Empire), and of course working on the house and the yard. That's been a great learning experience as far as putting together my business plan goes. I honestly never thought there would be so much to it.

The biggest thing of all, I guess, within the context of gaming, is my official retirement from World of Warcraft. Account's gone, game discs gone (except my goodies from BC collectors edition), and the game is uninstalled. I thought it would be harder than it was to quit. But I'm happy and enjoying my consoles again, and the whole buyer's remorse thing with buying games and letting them just sit on the shelf while I ran instances really late during the work week has subsided a lot.

That's mostly it for now. Hope to reconnect with you guys again. Shoot me a FR anytime.

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12 Days of Christmas Comedy, Day 2

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12 Days of Christmas Comedy, Day 1

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And a Happy Chranukahzaa to you!

Couple of things to report.

Last week I beat Halo on Legendary for the third time. I do think it is better than Halo 2, although I'm going to confirm that by playing through Halo 2 again. I didnt make it past the second Hangar stage on Legendary; lets see if I'm any better (I doubt it).

I've been on a BC binge this past week, and its been all FPS and RPGs. My secret Santa got me Jade Empire (which is just... wow) and a gift card that I used to get Doom 3 Limited Ed (see previous comment on Jade Empire for my thoughts on this). Additionally, I've fired up KOTOR again because KOTOR II is sitting here, and has NEVER BEEN PLAYED! I said I would not play it until KOTOR was finished, and I need to get around to it, dammit.

After that its Fable. I have not finished Fable, although I imagine it wont take that long. And lets not forget Oblivion or Ninja Gaiden (which I am halfway through, proudly!)

And somewhere in between all that I'm trying to fit WoW in there. Is it possible? Will I ever sleep? Honestly, I dont know, but I think I'm at the stage where I have enough to do game-wise. I'm hoping to nab RS6 Vegas from Santa so P8ntball and I can play, and I still love Gears, but at this point it needs to get less play time since I beat it on Insane.

Ah, if only I were 16 again... it would be SO much easier to make my goals! But then again I think I am getting a better value for my buck. After all, I'm not plowing through everything trying to find the next best thing

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Happy Small Software Vendor Day

Theres a good post over at Coding Horror where Jeff has declared today to be "Support Your Favorite Small Software Vendor Day".

As far as gaming and small software goes, I support QuerySpree, but check out my earlier blog on free game development tools for a list of other excellent, high quality freeware/shareware software products.

If youre a developer and have never come across this blog, you should set your favorite RSS parser to it immediately. Like toot sweet!

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Oh Yeah

For those of you who took part in the Focus Group, we decided on Green Tea. I got an A. Thanks for all your input.

Schools over in a week, thankfully... working hard on a final thesis in between bouts of GoW.

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Good Night Agamaggan!

To all my friends on Agamaggan - have fun, good luck in your advancements, and enjoy WoW! I'm taking Titan elsewhere and retiring my other characters - PM me if you'd like to know. I'll also be working on my Horde toon again on Stormrage, so if youre inclined to check out the dark side, drop me a line!

Special shouts to:

Jennifer - accept my FR already! I'm sorry I deleted it before.
Wytex - I'll see you around, I'm sure. I need to return the favor from Burnout still
Kate - you need to get your ass back on your 360 already and check out Gears of War before the "next big thing" comes along I may not see you in WoW anytime soon but I see you pop on for Dead Rising from time to time... so I know it hasnt gotten a hold of you yet.

As for the rest of you, well, the name will soon be available so if you want it... better grab it quick! It should be ready to go by end of this week.

/bye

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Why I Couldnt Help You

To That Person:

Normally I'd PM you, but you havent registered on the site. I doubt you will read this, but this whole thing has been bugging me ever since our exchange in PM and Guild chat. This is really just for my own cathartic personal benefit.

I am sorry that I was unable to drop what I was doing with my very limited time online and help you with what you wanted me to do. Despite my repeated mentions that I had limited time because of some work responsibilities, and that I was FAR away from the point where you wanted my help, you continued to pressure me into doing something that frankly, I was not prepared to do. It will only take X number of minutes, you said. Please can you just help me, you said. When I didnt reply to you within 15 seconds because I was in the middle of getting ganked, you asked again in guild chat.

I was unwilling to do it only because I did not have the time. I apologized to you for that. I didn't have to apologize, but I did because I genuinely felt bad.

Never mind that there were other folks online - for some reason you appeared to single me out, then ignore me when I said in both PM and guild chat that I could not help you, that I was sorry, was there something else I could do, what were you doing, etc. A simple "NP" would have been polite, given how much you hounded me to drop everything I was doing and rush to help you on the other end of the map.

There are other people on the other side of your keyboard. Keep that in mind the next time you get irritated by the fact that someone is unable to help you with your agenda. Its not personal.

In the end you ended up getting there and I'm glad you did, and I hope you finished what you needed to do.

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Focus Group

Need your help with some easy focus group stuff.

I have an odd assignment for my marketing class.

Highlight over the region below; a word will be revealed. What do you think of when you see the word? It can be anything - theres no right or wrong way to pronounce the word - I'm interested in your very first impressions.

One last thing - please dont repeat what the word is in your reply... I'd like to try getting as pristine an impression as possible without having the reader scan the replies for an idea.

So, without further ado, here it is:

JAMBLA

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The Song about Us

Not just for the Code(monkey/munkee)s on this site, for all code monkeys everywhere, this is our life rock anthem.

http://blogs.vertigosoftware.com/jatwood/archive/2006/07/25/Code_Monkey_very_simple_man.aspx

And by the way, if youre a coder and dont read Jeff Atwood, you should turn in your badge. Now.

EDIT - YouTube has a video. Its great, and its done in WoW.

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YTMND

My new favorite one.
http://vadercoaster.ytmnd.com/

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Some Great Music Links

I went to the Carrboro Music Festival this past weekend for my Fine Arts class (had to write a paper on a musical "event" - talk about a cake assignment).

It was outstanding. There was just about every genre of music in one form or another. Rain was forecast but the sun came out and I'm a nice golden brown.

Anyway, these were my personal favorites from the event:

Midtown Dickens is destined for great things, no doubt. Tetris is a riot.
www.myspace.com/midtowndickens

Puritan Rodeo Show is excellent.
http://puritanrodeo.com

Free MP3s from both sites.

World of Warcraft has its mitts in me pretty good again. This is a much better group of people to play with than my last guild. Now that my 60 is moved, I'm up to my old tricks again. The addiction has come back... but its more fun than ever before.

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Top 10 ITunes Songs

My top 10 played this month:

Bad Day - Fuel
Lost Control - Unwritten Law
Nothing As It Seems - Pearl Jam
Our Lady Peace - 4am
Touch, Peel and Stand - Days Of The New
Yellow Ledbetter - Pearl Jam
Cautioneers - Jimmy Eat World
Sugar, We're Goin Down - Fall Out Boy
Confessions, Pt. 2 - Usher
More Than A Woman - Angie Stone and Calvin

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LA Face With the Oakland Booty

Normally I dont do the DP thing in the blogs, but I had to share this.

This is a cover by Jonathan Coulton (who as it turns out is a WoW player) of Baby Got Back.

http://www.odeo.com/audio/1519801/view

Its acoustic, too. Its just brilliant, and hilarious. I'm now going to refer to "it" as my "anaconda", and it dont want none unless you got buns, hun.

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Just keeps calling me

Meet Pookie.

Pookie was the crack addict character in the classic film New Jack CIty, with Wesley Snipes and Ice-T. That person, in case you werent sure, is indeed Chris Rock.

In the movie theres a scene where hes getting a gun pointed at him and he's trying to tell Ice-T about what crack does to him (in case you havent seen the movie, and you should, its standard drug gang versus tough street cop fare, with some good music). He says to Ice:

"It just keeps callin' me man, that crack it just keeps callin' me..."

Which is exactly what World of Warcraft is doing to me now. I've been clean since April, but lately I've been jonesing hard core for it. I have no idea why.

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