Just a Zilch

Admob Expectations

2010-01-23T13:08:00.004-05:00

Today I decided to use admob.com to put out ads for one of my apps. I put $50 (the minimum allowable amount) into my account. My ads were set to a maximum bid price of $0.15. Admob wouldn't let me lower the maximum bid price below $0.15 due to the settings I had chosen to target (iPhones/iPod touches in North America, Canada, and the UK). People who don't target as stringently can have $0.10 minimum bids. I feel like minimum bids are bad especially when they depend on targetting information.

The app makes me $0.70 in profits per sale. It is currently ranked about 101-106 right now in the Business category after a good 3 weeks at around 80 - 100. Admob does not allow you to spend less than $50 per day.

I put $50 in the account at 11:15am. Two minutes later I got an email saying the funds dropped below $50. I didn't think much of it because one click would put it under $50. I checked my admob stats anyway but they weren't updated yet. By 11:44am I got the "your funds have been depleted" email. A feeling of dread came over me because I had a gut feeling I didn't make one sale. I checked my admob stats again, still all zeros.

My app has code to tell me when a new installation has been made and run. It said no new installations were run in the last 2 hours. So I checked the stats again about 30 minutes later. Finally they updated.

Impressions: 77,103
Clicks: 463
CTR: 0.60%
Cost: $50.00
Average CPC: $0.11

In thirty minutes at the minimum values admob allowed me to set, I spent 50$ and got 0% conversion. My current verdict on admob, save your money until they let you have more control over ad pricing. The minimums are way too high. I may post a retraction if I am surprised by tomorrows app sales reports but something tells me I'm going to be just as disappointed as I am now. I've obviously gotten a better idea of what my expectations should be and what settings to use should I ever decide to make the same decision. The bottom line is that admob is a bad choice for this particular app.

My advice to admob/google, which will be ignored, ditch the minimum ad bid so there is more of an actual economy and marketplace for ads. If Joe Small-time-developer can blow $50 in 30 minutes, it seems like you may have low inventory. You have a lot of people targetting $.99 apps and having minimum bids really cut into profits. I'm sure they helped you look good for your purchase by google but now that you have been bought, improve.

In the venerable words of my wife, "this was a mistake."

Thank you Reddit!

2010-01-21T13:22:00.018-05:00

Lately, my wife and I have been dealing with a lot of depressing crap. I asked reddit if they could help cheer her up by photoshopping a cute picture of our husky. We often like to joke about anthropomorphizing our dogs and get a kick out of it when other people do it. If it's wrong, I don't want to be right, I think it's funny. To the right is the original and below are the responses we got in random order (reddit user credit at bottom).

Thank you all so much, it really worked.

Personalize funny videos and birthday eCards at JibJab!

Pics by (reddit users) workroom, dessertbird, likeaturbine, screebler, TheMaskedMarauder, readcommentbackwards, TheSouthernThing, huge_douche, FingerBanginJesus, thesayshuh, snsr, mistermoxy, motlive, w4nd3e, omgplasticjesus, akkibaba, uberpenguin, roland19d, funkyb, emilat, oilandgasdowork, bastardman, Flapps, pheno9688, Chomp-ski, coatThtasTooPuffy, LadyA052, stiltzkin, t3hTr0n, kgoule, schnitzel, Negative__One, sighbourbon, Ash112233, sega01, ScottColvin, and icemounts.

My first Apple App Store Rejection

2009-11-19T14:46:00.003-05:00

So I'm making a game for the Apple iPhone. I've made a couple of apps in the store and haven't been rejected yet. Until of course, last night. I was trying to add a quick and dirty scoreboard system to my game and was using an undocumented API to add a textfield to UIAlertView.

I read everywhere that many apps use it and Apple was allowing it, so I tried. No one posted anything about being rejected because of it. It didn't work. Apple has automated systems that automatically reject an app using the private API's. These are the methods I used:

addTextFieldWithValue:label:
textFieldAtIndex:

So if you are planning on selling your app in the app store, don't use them. I ended up building my own modal score entry view and adding it over the cocos2d window.

Anyway, it turned out the rejection was a blessing because I found out that my anti-piracy code was broken and I did an about face on a previous decision. This gave me the opportunity to fix stuff before the initial launch.

Financial Responsibility

2009-09-11T07:41:00.003-04:00

Some may say your credit score is a measure of your financial responsibility. It doesn't take a rocket surgeon to realize that it's really just a measure of how well you play along with the worst deals ever. I apologize that I don't have specific score numbers to illustrate my point but the following facts really bother me.

Chase recently tried to increase the rate on my current balances by 5% (from 13% locked to 18% variable) despite the fact that I've never missed a payment and regularly make over payments. Obviously this is not the only thing they take into account when increasing rates, and it's also obvious they are trying to shoe horn these rate jacks in before the new legislation hits. I believe they said "the length of time the card has maintained a balance despite payment history."

When I saw this, I called up and the gentleman on the phone tried to convince me to keep the account open. There is a decent size balance left on it; it's my last credit card left to pay off. My wife and I are currently snow-balling our debt and are almost free and clear. However, I refuse to get tagged for extra money on the way out. I've only used a credit card once in the last decade and that was to buy some furniture for our new house. I had some college era debts that are all paid off and my father opened an account in my name and needed a hand paying it off so I took it over.

This is where the problem comes up. It is a credit card that I've held for a very long time. This means it looks really good on my credit report. So I was slightly embattled as to take the 5% rate jack and pay off at an accelerated rate or cancel the account and continue to pay it off at the same rate. I chose not to play along and take the credit score hit. I'm tired of corporations charging me extra for everything. I get it, you need to make money. How about honoring the deals you've already made? You get to change the deal as we go along without repercussion but I have to take a magical credit score hit because I don't want to get bent over?

I've had this card for years, just because there is a balance, I don't think Chase should take out their greedy aggression on me. They pay 0.01% interest rate on savings balances. It's upsetting that this happens months before I am applying for a construction loan but life goes on. I really think it's time to switch banks. I've been very fed up with the credit card industry for a very long time and have chosen to abstain and get out. The principle of it is that I was so close to freedom and they just needed to get a couple extra bucks out of me.

My point is simply this. What I did was a financially responsible decision in anyone's eyes but in the eyes of the credit reporting bureaus it wasn't. Therefore, it's not hard to see that the system does not honor all "financially responsible" decisions. So, did I make the right choice? Should I have taken the rate jack and transferred balances elsewhere? If I was still interested in playing the game, then yes. Only time will tell. I'm sure more than one person out there thinks I'm an idiot, but I have to make a moral stand somewhere. I need to get out of this game.

Once again, Sorry I don't have before and after credit scores to back up my whining.

For once, a company didn't rip me off... so far

2009-07-15T14:59:00.001-04:00

Two weeks ago I broke my verizon contract and got an Apple iPhone with AT&T. I needed it for work because we are making apps now. My old phone was an LG eNV2. I no longer had a use for it so I put it in a box with all the accessories and set it aside. This blog post is about my experience recycling/trading in my old phone.

About two days after this happened, I received an email from Best Buy (actually Dealtree's BestBuyTradein.com, a Best Buy partner) asking for the trade-in of old electronic devices in exchange for a best buy gift certificate. As a goof, I checked to see how much store credit I could get for my old phone. It was in great condition with no scratches because I kept the original plastic sheathing over the screen for the entire year I used it. I had purchased a USB data cable that didn't come with it originally for 3$ online (shipped). The battery had no water damage and still held a 3-4 day charge. All said and done, they offered me $67 for it and they would give me a prepaid shipping label. It cost me 1$ for a drop-off at a local shipping center.

I was wary of sending it in and getting back an offer lower than the original estimate (with an MO like that cash for gold business). But, my new iPhone needed a case and I had no further use for the phone. So, I took copious pictures, unlocked it, deleted everything in the memory, put the 8GB microSD card in my wife's phone and packed it up really well in a box I had lying around. The $67 in store credit seemed worth it to me.

This morning I received an email from them of their checklist after examining my phone. It matched up exactly to what I had said it would so they said they will be sending me the full $67 gift card. If the card ever shows up remains to be seen but they seem legit so I have no reason to believe it won't. Just wanted to share, I hope this post doesn't come off like I'm a corporate shill. There's still a chance that this could go horribly horribly wrong. It's a shame I am this skeptical about money actually coming out of a company.

I suspect that mobile phones and gaming devices are probably higher value. I checked the value of my Dell XPS gen 2 (slab)laptop, which still works really well for me. The quote was $140, well below it's actual value to me.

Interesting 4th of July Weekend

2009-07-06T13:47:00.001-04:00

On Friday, my wife gave our dogs rawhide bones to keep them busy while we sat down for a minute. They enjoyed them immensely but we usually take them away after 45 minutes to an hour so they don't overdo it. Apparently, this was a little bit too long. Loki threw up about a cup of rawhide in the kitchen.

On Saturday, I went for a ride with my father-in-law in his official looking crown victoria to pick up my sister-in-law. On the way, an aggressive driver was behind us. He honked at us at every red light because we weren't going fast enough. My father-in-law did a great job of ignoring him. We stopped at an intersection to make a left. While waiting, my father-in-law took his foot off the brake to inch upwards while we waited for traffic to clear. The aggressive guy behind us must have seen this and without looking started to proceed. He bumped into us at about 10mph, a decent nudge.

When my father-in-law and I got out, the kid thought we were cops and changed his tune immediately. I say kid because after exchanging information and viewing his license, he was seventeen years old, just got his license, and was still in his "probationary" period. There was no real damage to either car so we told him not to worry about it, to slow down, and that he was driving like a dumbass. Suddenly, he seemed extremely grateful and apologetic. It's amazing to me how aggressive people are with their cars and then, when it actually comes down to the inevitable accident, the road-side epiphanies they have.

Saturday night, we went to a party at a friend's house and surprisingly there was a moderately famous industrial metal band there hanging out. My wife is a fan of theirs. As we showed up, one of our friends went to give me a hug but she had a shish-kebob skewer in her mouth (which I didn't see and she was too drunk to realize). I felt it snap through a few layers of cheek-skin. Ouch!

Anyway, we had brought our dogs to the party and the husky was being great. The Kelpie was being her usual satanic self so we had to bring her home. On the way out, the singer of the band was telling us how awesome he thought the husky was. I made a passing reference to a line from Ben Stiller's "The Heartbreak Kid" and he caught it, "it smells like the devil's lettuce out here." He seemed like a nice guy. I would've liked to stay but the Kelpie was losing her mind chasing after this little pug that was also there.

On Sunday, we first went to my niece's fourth birthday party at my brother's ex-wife's house. It was kind of awkward since our entire family hates his ex-wife but it was for the baby. We keep it very civil so the baby doesn't know. They don't do the best job keeping up with the house so my wife and I abstained on the non-catered part of the food. We got her a pink Barbie hot wheels Jeep. She was elated and it was great seeing my family. On the way there, I got an email from Apple saying that my new iPhone app was approved and "Ready for Sale" in the iTunes store.

Later that night, we returned to the city for my wife's side of the family and my sister-in-law's birthday. It was great seeing everyone there too.

Fingernails

2009-06-24T10:14:00.000-04:00

I had dinner with my parents last weekend for Father's day. Somehow, during conversation, the reason why I stopped biting my fingernails came up. When I was about 8 or 9 years old, I had a problem with biting my nails. I'd always do it and my dirty fingers were always in my mouth. I shudder to think..

Anyway, my mother made me a deal I could not refuse. Exasperated with trying to get me to stop, she said, "If you never bite your nails again, I will buy you a video game." The video game I chose was somewhat new so it was still full price. I chose Contra for the NES.

I never bit my fingernails again. I wonder if it was the sheer awesomeness of Contra or my amazing will power... definitely Contra.

If I Was Dying Tomorrow...

2009-05-27T10:32:00.001-04:00

If I was dying tomorrow and for some reason the entire world would listen to the last thing I ever said, it'd be, "it's OK to let other people think differently than you." If anyone reads this, what would yours be?

Cancer Sucks

2009-05-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

Two weeks ago, my mother was diagnosed with stage II breast cancer. Last Friday, she went into surgery to have a double mastectomy with reconstruction. My wife and I joined her and my father in the waiting room while she was waiting to go into the operating room. She wasn't nervous. She was calm, collected, and prepared. She had so little time to prepare for this life-changing surgery and yet her determination to get rid of the cancer conquered any fear she had of the sacrifice to come.

Her doctors at MSKCC were fantastic. Everyone including the nurses were extremely friendly and caring. She was awake Saturday and feeling good despite nausea from the anesthesia. She said it felt like she worked out too much. She still had excellent mobility in her affected arm. We did whatever we could to help her back into the house on Sunday but she didn't really need any help. Her nausea subsided by Monday morning and she was eating a sandwich by lunchtime; in great spirits.

In the coming months, my mother will be subjected to chemotherapy and possibly radiation. It will obviously be very rough but I know that she will be just as brave going into it as she was with her surgery. She is looking forward to the final reconstructive surgery.

I truly admire my mother's strength and my father's steadfast support of his wife. It goes without saying that they are my heroes.

Lottery Customer Service Response

2009-05-21T17:41:00.006-04:00

In August of 2008, I sent an email through Megamillions.com inquiring if they had an RSS feed of the winning numbers. I was developing a tool and a feed would have been really helpful for it. So I asked them using their online contact form, "Do you guys plan to have a feed of the winning numbers in RSS, XML, or any other format available?" I entered my state as NY and my regular contact info. I believe it routed my question to the lottery email address shown in the image below. This re-routing must've been the problem.

Four months later, in December, I received a rather cryptic response, "Megamillions.com is not a NY site. Write to Megamillions.com." Now the first problem was, I did. The second problem was, WTF? That's your response? It doesn't even make sense. You could've at least sent a LITTLE customer service smoke my way.

Whatever, I found the feed on the site and my app is working fine to this day. It's definitely the weirdest email response I've ever gotten.

The Fruit Cup Incident

2009-05-20T14:17:00.001-04:00

This occurred about a year after I met my wife. I was living at my mom's house and I was really hungry one morning. All we had was a massive one gallon can of fruit cup in heavy syrup. For the purpose of this story, lets call the manufacturer "Mel Donte." My favorite!

Undeterred by my wife's prophetic advise, I ravenously gorged myself on fruit cup and drank what had to be a quart of the heavy syrup. I finished the entire gallon in the name of silencing the infernal rumbling in my stomach. It went away. Just as she predicted, over the next twenty minutes, a different rumbling returned only much lower and much stronger in intensity.

Before long, I was glued to the bowl with a steady flow of undigested fruit cup leaving my body. It took two days for my digestive tract to start functioning again. I tried to eat dinner that night. I never want to see undigested spaghetti in the toilet bowl again.

My wife will never let me forget The Fruit Cup Incident although she never once said "I told you so." To this day, I can't even so much as look at a fruit cup container without getting nauseous; just the words "fruit salad" sends shivers down my spine. I relearned many valuable lessons that day.

Survivor's Guilt

2009-05-06T17:58:00.000-04:00

Four people got axed yesterday and today one front end web developer from my group got let go. There are also rumors of one manager quitting. It sucks to see friends go. I found out that my last job was just replaced with an unpaid internship too.

I hope there are no more layoffs.

Rumblings

2009-05-04T13:11:00.000-04:00

There are rumblings of lay offs amidst the economic turmoil. Sales are down along with traffic to our properties. This may or may not really suck.

Do Not Separate Shipping and Handling

2009-04-21T17:32:00.000-04:00

Excessive handling charges should not leverage for making up the cost of free shipping. This is the oldest retail trick in the book of consumer chiseling. I understand that it's really profitable to say "Free Shipping" and then tack on $9.99 in "handling charges" but it makes your company look evasive, disingenuous, and old. Please stop this. If handling the item has anything to do with taking it off the shelf to put it in a box to ship, then I think you should include that as a shipping charge. My point is not that retailers shouldn't be compensated for the laborious task of packaging items they sell, but that separating the two and calling one free is evil.

I went to purchase a fuel pressure gauge from Jegs, and they were advertising "FREE SHIPPING!" The gauge turned out to be about $33 but with free shipping it came to $43. Not a lot of money but if this is an unavoidable fee that I must pay to do business with you, why the hell can't you just add it to the price of the object. Oh right, because then we can't see how low your bullshit prices are compared to Summit (who charges the same handling fee so why bother). In the end I decided to walk to the store and buy one the old fashioned way and use the $10 I saved for coffee and the bandwidth I used to whine about it on the internet.

tldr; wahh handling fees suck. My proposal is simple. Please just say it's $10 shipping and stop lying to make yourself look good. Sorry for another "grinds my gears" post but this bugs me.

Morale is in the Sub-Basement

2009-04-21T17:12:00.000-04:00

Just as I predicted, after the firing of my boss, my new boss doesn't care what's going on with my department. He is basically just the guy I let know when I'm coming in late or taking a day off. While he is a very cool guy, this isn't his field so he really can't be bothered. This was kind of dropped on him after the firing. Apparently it's not the first time it's happened either. He was in charge of web development before and I believe the guy who I replaced had quit because of a falling out with him. I don't have any falling outs with him because we never talk.

To make matters worse, we found out today that the company is secretly trying to lighten their development workforce by switching the majority of it's flagship website over to a CMS that was purchased from it's parent company. This isn't a tombstone for me because I don't work very much with the main website. For our front-end developers, it's really bad news. My vision is that round one will make them choose between which front-end guy out of two to keep. They are both very talented and it would be a damn shame for either of them to lose their job.

Round two is where they will start trying to take over maintenance of some of my sites. My sites are far more complicated than the ones they've been converting so good luck to them. This won't take place for at least a year or two; so for the immediate future I'm safe. But who the hell has the morale to continue when they know they are basically planned obsolescence. Combine that with a manager who doesn't give a shit about you and even if your work suffers, who cares? The silver lining is that development on the CMS has been horrifically slow. Chances are they will never even get to my sites before the zombie apocolypse. Besides, I'm building an Anti-Zombie fortress (new house) upstate in a year or two, so I am probably going to try to find a job up there instead of commuting for 5 hours a day.

I don't care anymore. I literally bust my ass, solve problems, and make fantastic things and the only person who notices, and says something, isn't listened to. Thanks for trying Jason. Be careful though, the last person who gave a shit about my work got fired.

Traits I Admired in My High School Friends and Where They Are Now

2009-02-25T06:50:00.004-05:00

Rose colored glasses? Perhaps. There was probably a ton of drama and many traits I didn't like about these old buddies. But looking back now, all I can think of is their overall personalities and the good things stick out way more prominently. Hopefully, they still have some fond memories of me, but for some reason I doubt it; I could be a bit of a tool. Anyway, this is "part one." I have a couple more friends with some redeeming qualities that I'd like to mention eventually.

The trait I admire most about my friend Jon was that he was a trustworthy person. He was the guy you could confide in and you felt like he wouldn't blab to everyone. While listening, he'd share some of his own secrets. We all thought he'd make a great used car salesman. It's not his ability to keep a secret that I admire, it's the ability to instill those feelings of trust in other people. He currently works for a huge bank and is pursuing an MBA.

Al was very intelligent. The running gag was that he was studying for his SATs since he was in 5th grade. I admire not just his level of intelligence but his will to pursue it. I got rather unfocused through high school and college and I believe echos of that still cause ripples in my current life. It wasn't until I met my wife that I got my shit together. At any rate, I noticed his name on the service tickets at the first job I got out of college but it turned out he left a year or so earlier. I have no clue where he is today, but I hope he lived up to his NASA JPL-like potential.

What I admire most of my friend Mike was his outgoing personality and ability to have fun. He was the guy in the group who would make new friends and introduce us to new people to hang out with. Mike liked his recreational pharmaceuticals but gave them up when he left school and turned out fine. He does very well at a creative ad agency.

I'll always admire the sense of humor my friend Brian has. We shared a lot of inside jokes throughout high school. When he was a baby, a rabbit bit the tip of his finger off. He wasn't immensely popular so he didn't really want to hang out with some of the other people I hung out with but we shared a ton of classes together. Just recently, I caught up with him on facebook and it turns out that he is in school to become a veterinarian. I laughed when I saw a picture of his girlfriend holding a rabbit and his comment said "he looks nice so your fingers should be safe."

My buddy Ryan, even though he was a follower, he was always a very happy person. He did what he liked and enjoyed it. Particularly, he loved fishing, chocolate milk, MTv, and fireworks. His father would regularly bring home fireworks from somewhere for him to play with. What I admire most about him is his unflagging happiness. Even after under going massive corrective surgery on his spinal chord, he was always smiling. One of the first few times I hung out with him, he was in a lot of pain but he was just sitting on his couch in his back brace, watching music videos and drinking chocolate milk. Unfortunately, Ryan passed away at 24 years old after being injured in a car accident. I admire his ability to always be happy despite being in life-altering pain.

I Feel For Ya

2009-02-20T07:23:00.001-05:00

EDIT: This was written before this post but posted afterwards.

A friend of mine at work has been having a rough time lately.

He got booted out of his apartment on the 4th so he had to get a new one but couldn't move in until the end of the month due to the lease. He had to drop a G and a half on hotels for a weekend until he could find a place to stay.

Then the father of one of his girlfriend's kids started causing a ruckus with her and Child Services was called. My friend also has a baby with the woman so he was completely messed up by the allegations. Child Services had interviews with everyone involved and found out that he was, in fact, doing the right thing by the kids and no action was taken. In fact, they took his side and told him they were truly impressed.

On top of that, he says he has been getting into major fights with his manager at work. Since I work with both parties I can't get involved on either side. He is afraid he may lose his job.

While we were talking the other day, I had a classic foot-in-mouth situation where I brought up something about the interview process for our job area that he didn't really want to discuss. It was a test of PHP skill. Since I wasn't speaking directly to him about it, he kept silent and approached me later with his thoughts on it. While he was talking about it, he brought up one of the classic interview questions, "what is your greatest strength?"

The passion with which he answered, "I'm tenacious, I never give up. If there is something I don't know, I will hack away at it until I get it" really struck me. We are both PHP developers and honestly, I'm not sure what his code looks like. I haven't come across it, because we work on different projects. I do know he is a very hard working guy.

The tenacity he speaks of, I believe I have the same thing in myself (only in regards to programming). The speed at which we may resolve our challenges may be different but I don't think he's any different than I am. I have nothing but respect for him.

Anyway, if you read this dude, don't be pissed that I blogged about it. I'm pulling for ya. I wrote this on January 24, 2009 but I've delayed posting it. I hope everything has worked out for you by the time I post this.

Well shit...

2009-02-17T17:50:00.001-05:00

Last week, I caught a cold from my loving wife. Although I had scheduled Thursday off for some paintball fun, I was sick and couldn't go. I had to call in on Friday as well. Unfortunately, it turned out that on Thursday, the other PHP developer was fired. I wrote a post about me foreseeing this but I never posted it. I will post it this week.

Anyway, the root cause why he got fired was because my boss wanted him gone. I was good friends with both sides so I didn't get involved. However, the following day, my boss was fired! The politics involved are head spinning so I won't get into specifics but he was let go because of a "self preservation" act of another employee here.

What the fuck!

They took one of the guys out of network engineering who knows nothing about web development and put him in charge of all development. He's a great guy and all but my old boss was really good at what he did. He knew what was going on and could come up with new projects because it was his only job. He was a great designer too.

Now the selfish part of this whole bullshit, I have no one to go to lunch with and all the good I've done has pretty much been thrown out the window. I may as well have been sitting here for 8 months with a thumb up my ass doing nothing.

This really sucks. My ex-boss at one point had even started taking me to extra meetings because he wanted me to take his place when he eventually moved out of the country in August.

So now, I'm back down to shlub level and I guarantee that after this blast of projects is done, I will have little but maintenance to do.

Doggies

2009-02-08T19:40:00.001-05:00

He is anxiously awaiting his waffle breakfast.

New Year's Eve 2000

2009-01-24T11:52:00.000-05:00

When I was a mere lad, I had a hankering to get drunk and go to Times Square for New Year's Eve 2000. I figured it was a once in a lifetime event and we knew security was going to be tight. Most of this night is REALLY hazy because I got almost black-out drunk. This was about seven months before I met my wife.

Tom, Grandpa, and I decided to go. By the time I got there I was totally drunk. I had a backpack that had a bottle of SoCo and JD. When we showed up, there was a police line and no one could get into the main area anymore.

This was fine with me since I was close enough to see the ball. So we were just partying with the people stuck behind the line. I met this enormous Samoan who called himself "House." He was pretty drunk too. At some point he decided to rally the thousands of people around him with a war cry to charge the police line. It was as if everyone knew what his war cry meant and immediately charged.

Tom, Grandpa and I got right behind him and as the flood of people started pushing past the cops, we slipped past the line. NYPD quickly got the flood pinched off so less than a hundred people got past but Tom, Grandpa, and I barely did. We caught them by surprise but they were obviously prepared for such a push. I think a police officer grabbed Tom's backpack but let go and helped keep the line instead. We all regrouped.

We moved further into the middle area and got a closer look at the ball. I met a ton of really cool people, I wish I could remember more about them. There was one guy from South Africa who had this gnarly safari hat, a couple that were having relationship problems, a woman named Anita who was waiting for her cousin, and a handful of kids from Canada that we partied with after the ball dropped.

We had to pee in a cup since there were no bathrooms available. We would pee in the cup while the other two would block the view. Then we would dump it out in the gutter. It was excellent teamwork. We had a special cup set aside for this task. At some point, a drunken reveler poured SoCo in the cup and walked away with it before we could warn him. Gross!

On the way home, we took the Canadian kids we were hanging out with to the train station. One of their group lived on Long Island so Grandpa ended up driving her home after the train trip back out to Massapequa Park.

When the ball dropped, Grandpa said I kissed Anita but I don't altogether remember it. A few days later, I started panicking when I got a red spot on my lip. I thought Anita gave me a cold sore! When I found out it was a pimple I laughed at myself. The doctor said, "relax it's a pimple. Get some sleep..."

All in all, it was a ton of fun, a ton of embarrassment, and a celebration to sort of remember.

Addiction Slough Checkup

2009-01-24T11:13:00.004-05:00

Well, I've been soda-free for a little over a month now. I feel great. I haven't lost any weight or anything but my sugar levels aren't as rattled by the end of the day. Typically, by the time I'm leaving work, my jaw and hands are shivering due to my collapsed blood sugar levels. Now that I've been drinking water and not-eating fast-food, I usually have a stable sugar level all day.

Oh yeah, I'm mildly hypoglecemic. Double oh yeah, after I told my wife I was quitting soda, she decided she'd like to quit fast-food. Not to be outdone in the supportiveness department, I told her if she quit eating fast-food, I would too.

Am I exercising more? Not yet, but I feel like yesterday would have been a great time to start.

The absolute worst part so far has been not drinking Rum and Cokes after work. Whilst looking for a replacement, I turned to Long Island Iced Teas. I believe I've fallen in love with alcohol all over again.

I'm planning a triumphant return to game development very soon.

Commuters: The Wrecking Ball

2009-01-24T09:08:00.000-05:00

The Wrecking Ball - One who nods off to sleep violently and repeatedly into you.

One day, on the express bus to Manhattan, I was in one of those seats where someone sits in front of you but perpendicular to you. Someone else is crammed right up next to you on your left. In effect, you are in the armpit of the bus.

The one on the left started to fall asleep and started to nod off. Then she shifted her weight my way and repeatedly slammed into me with a quick snort. Then, the one in front of me started to do the same. It was really annoying but since the bus was so damn crowded, and I was wedged deep in the stinky armpit, there was no where to run from the wrecking balls.

There's some kind of unwritten rule about commuting on NYC public transportation that requires you to stand your ground against all kinds of heinous shit.

I Was Born 1 Year Too Soon

2009-01-12T14:46:00.001-05:00

I should have been born one year later than I actually was. My reasoning is two-fold. As my three rss subscribers know, I am extremely interested in computers. I'm a programmer and develop independent video games. I have had dreams about writing code. So here are my selfish reason why I believe all Academia is horseshit.

My first reason, they offered Visual BASIC programming classes in my high school. That is until the year after I graduated and then they switched to C++. So, I'd like to say fuck you to my high school. Despite C++ being very prevalent in the industry at the time, they refused to update anything. The Advanced Placement class was Pascal. I even wrote a very persuasive letter to the school administration. I never even got a response. While most final projects in Visual Basic were simple form applications, I handed in a graphical version of the game "Duck Hunt." Yeah so, fuck you high school, I already taught myself C++ anyway.

My second reason is that Game Design/Development as a Bachelors wasn't offered until a year after I fucking graduated college (not including Digipen but I couldn't afford them). Yeah I know, the courses probably suck but sod that, I'd rather have taken Game Design courses than boring Computer Science.

I basically ended up teaching myself everything I know. The classes I had no interest in I struggled in. I was told to shut my mouth and study. The classes I had no problems with (programming) were breezes and not even close to a "challenge." While I am thankful for my education, I am resentful that my interests were considered "niche" until it was too late for me.

Just something I've noticed that really pisses me the hell off. Overall, I'm quite pleased with the angry whiny zilch I've grown up to become.

Inane Mental Blabbering

2009-01-09T10:26:00.001-05:00

I'd like to leave the rat race and open a Bavarian themed bed and breakfast called Der Puppen Shaüer. I'd leave little Kielbasas on customer's pillows in the morning.

I think the only two things that will survive a nuclear war are roaches and hoarders. Is there anything more insidious and frightening than a shopaholic hoarder?

The best time to take holiday vacation is about two days (a little less) after the holidays. Here is my reasoning. When you get together with family and friends at the holidays, everyone is kissing each other and shaking germ covered hands. This can spread Influenza and Rhinovirus like widely. If you take your vacation so that the holiday lands in the middle, you will go back to work just as the cold is taking hold of it's victim and they are very contagious. If you take your vacation so that the holiday is at the end, you will be commuting in buses and trains full of carriers. People feel guilty about taking sick days after holidays so they show up sick or not. Therefore, take your vacation after the holidays and you will be limiting your exposure risk to those who were at your get-together.

If everyone stuck in traffic on the highway accelerates at the same rate at the same time, would there be no traffic?

Can I Do It?

2008-12-17T06:53:00.004-05:00

I've decided I'd like to try to quit something. I have a few standard "socially acceptable" addictions such as video games, coffee, soda, fast food, etc. Nothing that detrimental but I feel that if you look close enough, there's a monkey on everyone's back. So, I've decided to try to quit drinking soft drinks.

Whether you call it soda, pop, or cola, there's no denying that the delicious bubbly elixir is not healthy. Maybe I can lose a couple pounds by cutting out all that sugar. I had switched to diet soda before I decided to quit altogether but I actually feel like the diet soda is making me gain weight. Weird.

I started yesterday and I almost slipped at lunch. I realized what I was doing only after I put fifty cents in the machine. Since the machine wouldn't give me my money back I bought a Coke and gave it to one of the other developers.

To be perfectly honest, I'm a little nervous about drinking water-cooler water instead of soda. At my last job, I'd catch a cold every time I drank from the water cooler. Without fail, I took a sip, and two days later the sore throat started. A water cooler is probably a great breeding ground for germs.

To be even more perfectly honest, I'm really really really going to miss Rum and Cokes. Oh well, let's see if I can do it.