SciDad23's Blog - 2old2play

New Addition to the Family

My wife was scheduled for a C-section on Friday to deliver our daughter, but apparently the baby didn't agree to the timing. My wife woke me up at 4AM and told me her water had broken and that we needed to head to the emergency room. 4 hours later, Kaylee Morgan was delivered, still C-section, at 8:44 AM. 9 lbs, 5 oz, 21 inches long, and a head that is quite a bit smaller than her dad's.

My wife's fine, resting in the hospital, baby's great too. It's cliche, but it's amazing seeing a life brought into the world. I'm still stunned. Now I have to figure out how to get some gametime in around the lack of sleep. Halo 3 next week, crapton of games next month. I'm gonna be toast!

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Oral Surgery SUCKS

I'm a big wuss when it comes to being sick. I just want to be left alone, my wife's pretty good at letting me, which is great for us. It's even worse when I'm feeling perfectly healthy and my back molar breaks in 2 places, causing me to subject myself to the barbaric practices of the dental industry. At 10:30 AM, some dental assistant/nurse knocked me out with a poorly placed IV line (It's not supposed to BURN when it's in your arm, Lady, that means you MISSED THE VEIN). 40 minutes later I'm waking up in the office sitting next to my wife, not remembering putting on my sweater or walking to the room I'm currently residing in. After checking to make sure my pants were still buckled and my zipper was still up (don't trust those dentists, I've seen the Corben Bernson movie), I apparently began repeating questions to my wife, I was stuck in some kind of loop. Here's how the conversation went (according to her, as I was pretty much still out of it at this time)

Me: What time is it?
Her: 11:25

Me: Did they give me my tooth? (I had apparently asked for it when I was still in the surgery room, even drugged up I'm curious)
Her: Yes, I have it

Me: How many Vicodin did they give me in the perscription?
Her: 20
Me: Good, I can sell the rest for 10 bucks a pop at work, HAHHAAHAHAH (I thought this was hilarious, she......not so much)

Me: What time is it?
Her: 11:26

You get the picture.....

Now I've got a nice hole in my gum, I can only eat "soft" foods for 24 hours, which means jello, pudding, and milkshakes to me! My wife's pushing me to eat mashed potatoes, pasta, etc. To her I say "Good Luck!"

Gotta go, Vicodin buzz is wearing off. Never played online under the influence of legal narcotics, should be fun tonight!

[3 Comments]

Podiobooks

Not sure how many of you elderly guys and gals are podcast fans, but I’m hooked on them. The radio reception sucks at my office, and I like listening to talk radio, so the podcast thing is a pretty good substitute. I usually listen to half a dozen or so pretty regularly, Diggnation (video podcast), TWIT, Preston and Steve (local Philly radio guys – they drop the music and commercials out of their radio show and release the rest, very VERY funny), Ask a Ninja (video podcast), and of course, 2old2type (whenever they actually release a new one).

I recently found something new in the podcast world, “podiobooks”. Think of a book on tape/CD. Now, imagine that the author himself reads it to you, and instead of releasing the entire book at once, he/she releases a chapter a week, episodically, like a podcast. I’ve been listening to “The Rookie” by Scott Sigler. It’s a combination of sci-fi and sports, football in the future, aliens and humans playing together. Sounds cheesy, but it’s pretty good. The production quality is excellent, and the story is very well developed and well written. Sigler has a few other podiopooks, “Ancestor” and “Earthcore”.

If you like listening to audiobooks, try these out. They’re free, and you don’t need an iPod or iTunes to listen to a podcast, they’re recorded as mp3’s, so all you need is a media player. If anyone wants any help getting started, just send me a PM, I’d be happy to help.

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Travelling Sucks

At the risk of sounding like a hokey stand-up comic, I’ve gotta rant about airline travel.

Travelling for work sucks. This past year my job “description” changed, requiring me to travel twice a month to customers’ sites for my company. I’m a Research and Development Manager for one of the world’s largest chocolate manufacturing companies. And by “largest” I mean we make so much chocolate that if you’ve eaten chocolate in some form in the past week, there’s a better than 40% chance that you’ve eaten our chocolate. The odd thing is, nobody outside the industry knows who we are, because we don’t have a retail line in the US. So when I tell people what I do for a living, I also get to explain about the “who” as well as the “what”. But I digress, back to the travel thing.

I’m not a tiny fella, I’m 6’5”, 350 lbs, built like a linebacker, cuddly like a teddy bear. My wife loves me, my son loves me, my parents, brother, sister-in-law, nieces and nephew all love me. The airlines, however, most decidedly do NOT love me. What jack-a-ninny designed an airline seat assuming that every rear end that sits in it is going to be 19 ½” wide? Every time I get on a plane, it’s like playing Russian roulette. I squeeze into a seat, aisle preferably, so I’m not crammed against the bulkhead for the duration of the flight. Now comes the fun part, watching everyone pass down the aisle, chanting “don’t stop here, keep on moving” in my head, hoping beyond hope that nobody has to sit next to me and I can actually breathe during the flight.

Once the cabin door is closed and nobody’s had the unfortunate luck to be placed in the seat next to me, I can relax a little. At this point I usually reach for the in-flight magazine that I’ve read 10 times in the past few weeks. What I’m really doing is killing time until the flight crew decides it’s safe enough for me to risk turning on my video ipod without causing us to burst into flames or simply vanish into some space-time vortex that is obviously created every time someone uses an “approved portable electronic device” prior to the “ding” at 10,000 feet. What could possibly happen if I decide to listen to my audio book or watch and episode of Brisco County Jr. at 9,000 feet?

Then the hotel fun begins. The only thing that bugs me about sleeping in hotels is the sleeping part. I swear if I have to sleep on another 12 dollar queen sized mattress with marshmallow box springs and sheets that wouldn’t stay on the mattress if you stapled them there, I’m going to set fire to the building and run away into the night, giggling like a schoolgirl on an all-night milkshake and French fry bender.

Eating alone in restaurants is fun too, conversations going all around you while you sit in the corner like a mob boss, scarfing down your steak so you can get back to your crappy mattress in your non-descript hotel room and sleep for 2 hours at a clip before getting up before the sun rises to visit some dairy in the middle of Indiana. I do like eating for free though, but now my company has set a 50 dollar per day limit on meals. 50 bucks a day to eat sounds like a lot, and it is, depending on where you’re trying to eat. I can eat for 20-30 bucks a day in the states, small town, fast food stuff. However, if I’m staying in Paris, Zurich, or New York City for example, dinner alone will run you 30-40 bucks. This leaves 10 bucks for breakfast and lunch. The best part is that my company decided that they shouldn’t have to reimburse us for lunch, as they don’t pay for our lunch when we work at home. My argument to that brilliant piece of deductive reasoning is that it’s fairly hard for me to pack my lunch and bring it to work when I’m 2,500 miles from my kitchen.

Having said all this, I do like visiting customers. I’m not in sales, so I couldn’t care less if they’re buying a lot or a little. They usually have a lot of interesting questions for me, so the visits aren’t boring. I like solving problems, and when I do, the customers are normally really appreciative. Not “here’s a 100 gift card to Best Buy for flying out here and saving us $50,000 a month on our process” appreciative, but appreciative nonetheless.

The major downside to all of this is two-fold. I’m away from home, which means I’m away from my family (wife – gestating a second kid, and my 18 month old son, slowly and methodically destroying my house). The other problem with being away from home is being away from gaming. I have a DS, which is fine for killing time in the airport, but I can’t play that for long stretches without splitting headaches and hand cramps. I also miss out on launch day goodness with my clanmates, GRAW 2 most recently, as I usually travel Tuesday-Thursday.

Well enough of my whining. The “blogging” thing is cathartic, but I’m not sure if it’s entertaining to read on your part. If you made it this far, I leave you with a brilliant statement by Groucho Marx:

“Outside of a dog, a book is a man’s best friend. Inside of a dog, it’s too dark to read”.

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Bored at Work

Normally I’m running all over my office and out into the plant juggling 15 different projects and trying to maintain some semblance of sanity in an otherwise looney environment. Today I found myself sitting at my desk, staring at my monitor and wondering how early I can sneak out of here since my boss just left for a 3 day trip to the great white north, meetings with our French Canadian brothers and sisters in Quebec. It’s not that I don’t have anything to do, but it’s just that I don’t really want to start one any of the projects looming on the horizon. We just found out that we’re losing our site Engineer, he’s being relocated to another site next week. This basically means that in addition to being the Research and Development Manager/Process Improvement Manager, I also get to pick up his slack and handle the site Engineering (ordering equipment, overseeing contractors, new equipment installation, etc.) It’s a logical progression to my job, I’m the one that comes up with the recommendations to equipment modifications and feasibility studies for new processing lines, but now I get to handle the installation and implementation of the lines as well. Know what the best part of all this is? I get to do it for the EXACT SAME SALARY that I currently bring home. Aren’t I lucky?

Ahh, enough of my slack-jawed yammering about my job.

On the gaming front, I’m patiently wading my way through the desolate wasteland that post-holiday gaming usually is. No new releases to speak of for months. I’ve played most of the way through Marvel Ultimate Alliance. I’m not really thrilled about COD3’s single player. Rainbow 6 seems to be taking up my online shooter time, so multiplayer COD3 isn’t really exciting me either. I played through Rainbow 6 on Normal, I’m working my way through on Realistic now. I unlocked all the micro-games in WarioWare for the Wii. I think I’ll get back into Zelda on the Wii, I was playing a bit of that before Christmas, maybe I’ll give it some more time.

In the upcoming game list, I’m really just waiting for Guitar Hero 2, NBA Street and GRAW2 for the 360. I might pick up some used DS games from Gamecrazy tomorrow, I have some coupon thing for a “buy-one-get-one-free” on used portable games, maybe I’ll snag something to burn up some slow time at work on the DS Lite.

Speaking of gaming, I picked up a Rubik’s cube from Amazon the other day. I had one as a kid, never solved it without the use of a butter knife and some re-assembling skills. I handed it to my wife, she sufficiently scrambled the crap out of it for 10 minutes and I started screwing around with it. I solved about half of it, 2 and a half sides so far. It’s fun going back and looking at a puzzle as an adult, logic instead of brute force. My wife also enjoyed the opportunity to point out once again that I’m just a big kid.

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Changed my mind

My clan is full of bastards. Just chock full. They're everywhere. Bastards all over the place.

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Clan Gaming

I’ve been playing games online since 1996, way back in the AOL pay-per minute dial-up days. My first online game was Dark Forces II: Jedi Knight. I can still remember the feeling of going head to head in a light saber duel with some random person, knowing that I was beating the crap out of an actual person instead of some AI controlled bot that the game programmer thought would challenge me. After wiping the floor with the random Jedi, I was quickly introduced to what I eventually came to realize was a gaming law: “No matter how good you think you are, someone in the next match is likely going to hand you your head”.

Jedi Knight also introduced me to my first experience of online cheating. I remember chasing some poor bastard down a hallway, firing away at him as he sprinted by a couch. Suddenly the couch sprouts a light saber and slashes the guy down in the hallway and turns to face me. I toss a few thermal detonators at him, unload my blaster at his evil cushions, to no avail. The couch hops down the hallway, cuts me down, and bounds away. Not only was this guy using some sort of “god-mode” cheat that rendered him invulnerable, he had re-skinned his character model to a sofa. While I despise cheaters, the sofa skin was brilliant.

I say all that to say this, playing in a clan like 2Old4Tactics has been a great experience. Most of my online gaming was limited to PC gaming prior to picking up my Xbox 360. I played a little NCAA Football and Madden in the GSN clan, but that basically fell apart after people decided to abandon the leagues, complain that the teams they picked prior to the beginning of the league weren’t fairly balanced in comparison to the other teams in the league (one of the inherent failings of online sports gaming, in my opinion), and generally make playing in the clan a chore. Interest split between Madden and NCAA, nobody really made the NBA 2K7 switch, and after the debacle that was the Tiger Woods 07 inability to actually play online unless I was one of the 50 people in the WORLD who happened to get into the ONE room EA had set up for Tiger Woods 07, I pretty much dropped out of site as far as the clan was concerned.

I was leery to try out the clan experience again, but after playing some R6 Vegas with some site members and not completely sucking at it the entire time, they asked me to join up. Not realizing how discriminating these bastards were at the time, I accepted, feeling a brief surge of pride, kind of like being picked up as the 5th man in a pickup basketball game at Rucker Park. Now I realize we’ll pretty much let anyone with a twisted sense of humor and the ability to aim relatively straight into the clan, but I’m still proud, in a “twisted” kind of way.

As a married father of 2 (on in the uterus, developing from a zygote to a fetus, one running around my house destroying my stuff like any good 18 month old will do), I realize that I don’t have a lot of free time for “friends” in the real world. I, like most men, have a few guy friends, one of which I’ve known since we were 5. The rest of my “friends” are married to my wife’s friends, which for the most part means that by default, they’re my friends as well. Few of them are gamers, and most of whom I see only a few times a year. This severely limits my social gaming. My wife’s not a gamer, she pretty much sticks to occasionally playing Super Monkey Ball, Tetris or a game of Bejeweled on the laptop now and then. While I can’t wait for my kids to play games with me, the oldest is 18 months, I think I’ll wait a few more months before I introduce him to the distinct joy of finally popping someone in the head after they’ve dropped you with sniper fire from across the map 5 times in a row (yes, rabb, I’m talking about you). So this left me a solitary gamer, which was fine for a while. Now I can honestly say that I’m hooked on the online component of gaming.

[6 Comments]

Job Situation

It's been a few weeks, so I figured I'd post some thoughts on working in todays world.

My wife is a stay-at-home mom, she's fantastic at it and I couldn't be happier that she's home with my son (and will be with the next one too, hopefully). It might not be possible for everyone, but it's what we wanted. When we bought our house, we bought one that we could afford to pay the mortgage on my salary alone. It's small, it's old, but it's mine (well some tiny fraction of it, in 30 years it'll be mine)

However, being the working dad just BLOWS. I see my kid about an hour a day, including helping with his bath and getting him ready for bed. He's an amazing little boy and I'm worried that I'll miss so much being out of the house working. I travel for my job, just found out recently that I'll be travelling even more frequently, twice a month to anywhere in North America that the sales team needs support from the technical expert (that's me, whoopideedoo).

What REALLY blows is that my company decided that due to some less than stellar performance in NAFTA's EBIT contribution to the company worldwide, we all are in a salary freeze. No raises, no cost of living increases, NOTHING. Factoring in inflation and the increased premiums for my health insurance, I'm making less money this year than I did 2 years ago. Feels great to be working 70 hours a week for less than I made when I worked 40-50. Gotta love being salaried management.

Anyway, I have some feelers out for a job change in the same market. I'm a Food Scientist, in my area of the country there are a few nice choices, and I'm hoping to hear about one in the next week or so. Could be a great thing for me, less travel, hopefully more money, and right down the street from where I work now. We'll see what happens, but I'm praying it works out. Adding another kid to this household is making me want to look at a bigger place or putting an addition onto this one. Shoot, an addition will only run me $40,000. What's 30% added to my principle on a mortgage over 30 years, right?

Wow, this might sound sexist, but it just sucks to be a man sometimes. But then again, I can pee standing up and I don't have to wait in line to do it when we go out to eat. On second thought, it just sucks to work. Someone give me some money, i'll tattoo their name on my forhead and advertise whatever they want, just pay me to stay home.

[2 Comments]

Got Some GREAT News Today

My little family (myself, my wife Stacie, and my 16 month old son Colin) is about to get a little bigger. My wife is pregnant! We think the baby's due end of September, she's gotta go to the doctor for the "official" date, but we're pretty sure we're close!

Holy crap how am I going to support 3 people on my salary? Jeez I love being a man.

Sheesh

[5 Comments]

Rainbow 6 Multiplayer

Played my first session with some of the 2o2p guys in Rainbow 6: Vegas. Gotta say I had a blast. It's a combination of "tactical shooter and grenage winging panic fragfests in a crowded hallway" kinda game. Played pretty well after about an hour or so, but I spent the first dozen rounds just waiting to respawn. I ended up holding my own towards the end, got my first "promotion", Private 1st Class, I'm now officially on par with Gomer Pyle. I rule. Looking forward to playing again with them, it was a nice group of guys, 10-12 total, great for some of the smaller maps, but a little tough for the Dam level. Too spread out for teams of 5 or 6.

Overall, great experience. Since nothing much is coming out in the next few months (Lost Planet is the only thing that even remotely interested me) it's nice to find a mulitplayer game that might keep me interested for a while!

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Wii - Less Fun Alone?

Been a while since I posted, and since I'm waiting for a DVD to finish burning, thought I'd throw out a few thoughts.

I picked up a Wii on launch day, birthday present from my wife, along with Zelda, Rayman and Monkeyball. I've had a BLAST playing it with my brother, his son (he's 6) and even got my wife to play a little Monkeyball and Wii Bowling. I have noticed a disturbing "trend" though. The Wii seems to be less enjoyable as a single player gaming system. It seems custom built for "party" gaming, but aside from Zelda, I haven't really enjoyed single player games on it (rented several other titles). This seems a little worrisome to me, as I'm a 32 year old married man with a 1 1/2 year old son and a job that keeps me either in the office 60-70 hours a week, or on the road visiting plants and manufacturing sites several times a month, all over the US and Canada. I don't have a lot of time for "party" gaming.

I'm not saying I'm not happy with the Wii, but I'm hoping that there are a few more great single player games down the road. I love the innovative control idea, here's to hoping someone does something great with it. Metroid looks like it'll rock, the Advance Wars version looks pretty cool too.

I guess I'll stick with the 360 for the "traditional titles" and keep an eye out for the inventive stuff from Nintendo. In the mean time, I've been using the Wii's backwards compatibility to catch up on some great Gamecube games that I never finished, namely Resident Evil 4, Eternal Darkness, Super Mario Sunshine and Zelda: Ocarina of Time.

Well, that about sums it up. Anyone think I'm nuts? Anyone agree? Comment away!

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DS = Travelling Gaming

As I previously stated in some random ramblings, I'm going to Europe for a few weeks for work. While I usually bring a bunch of DVD's with me to watch on the laptop, I get tired of passive entertainment after a while. I traded in a barely functioning PS2 (constand DRE's) and a bunch of old games and picked up a DS Lite and a few games (Mario Kart DS, True Swing Golf, Big Brain Academy, Animal Crossing, and Castlevania).

I'm loving this little sucker. I had a Gameboy Advance for a while, but after a business trip I found it had cracked right through the screen. After using a few contacts at the local EB, I was able to swap it for a new one, but then traded it in elsewhere for some random XBox game or something. I had forgotten how much fun the portable gaming end of the hobby really is. I wasn't tempted to pick up a PSP, primarily due to the pricetag. I probably wouldn't have picked this DS up if it wasn't for the trip, but I'm glad I did.

It's great for passing a few minutes at work, grabbing a few minutes in Animal Crossing to try to pay off my house (Tom Nook is a bastard, 180,000 bells for a one room expansion and a new roof, he should be shot, that rat bastard racoon. )

If anyone's looking for some portable gaming, I highly recommend the DS Lite.

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NBA2K7

I'm really looking forward to the new NBA2k7 for the 360. I've been playing basketball games in some form or another since the Atari 2600. Here's my top 3 of all time

Sega Genesis: Bulls Vs. Celtics ---- as quite possibly one of the biggest MJ fans on the planet, this game was a dream come true. My brother always played the Celts and tried bombing 3's with Bird, but never could beat me and MJ. heheh

Sega Genesis: NBA LIVE 95 -- got me through college. I was broke, couldn't afford much gamewise, but I paid for dinner many a weekend after cleaning the floor with the guys in my dorm and taking their money. Pippen had this up and under move that could NOT be stopped.

Dreamcast: NBA 2k -- the first real alternative to the EA drivel that Live has become. I was amazed by the camera angles, the realism, the "sim" feel.

Can't wait for the new one. My wife's gonna miss me, I'll be up late for a while with a new season of NBA gaming. Now I just have to figure out who to pick for the online league in the GSN. Maybe this time the league won't crap out after 4 weeks.

Sheesh

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Going Back to Europe

I just found out today that I have to go back to Europe for 2 weeks. I spent a week or so last November in Zurich, Switzerland and Marbach, Germany. This time I'm going to Marbach again, then to Paris, France......then Louviers, France......then to London, UK.....BACK to Louviers, France, ......back to Paris, France.....then back home to NJ.

Gotta love my job. I actually kinda like the travel, and I've been home for about 6 consecutive months now, so it's not all bad. Rough thing about it is having to leave my wife and son for 2 weeks. He's just turned 1 and I feel like if I miss 2 weeks I'll be missing so much more. Well, that's why God invented digital cameras and International Cellular Phone service!

here's my favorite picture from my last trip to Europe....took it myself! not too shabby for an amateur!

Basilica of the Sacré Cœur

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Starting him out early

Figured I'd "brag a little", and throw out a picture of my little buddy. This is my son, just turned 1. He's the reason I go to work every day and get my head kicked in by my boss. I never knew what "pride and joy" really meant until we had this little bugger.

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