Well, I would like to update my blog but I can't. I lost the cable that connects my camera to my computer. And, without the cable, I can't transfer pictures. And, without pictures I can't stimulate my memory. And. if I can't stimulate my memory, I can't form a narrative. So, I guess I can't make blog entry.
Last time I checked in I think I was bitching about my boat being broke. My boat is still broke. I appreciate the feedback from people who have added comments to my blog suggesting how to fix it. Please, I implore you, show up with a toolbox this weekend and let me know when you fix the problem because, you see, my mechanic can't quite seem to figure it out.
Currently the boat is running fine at speeds up to 8mph, which is all I need to putter around the lake. All I really, personally, like to do is putter around the lake anyway. I hate throwing good money after bad and I just don't feel like spending any more money on the thing. I was only planning on keeping the boat for another two years at the most. Now I'm considering just buying a new one next year when the boat show comes around. Of course, that will depend on my job situation.
I sure could have a lot of jobs if I wanted to. It seems that if you type into Google 'game programmer resume' I must come up somewhere on the hit list. Maybe not number one, who knows, maybe it is number 1,615. Nevertheless, headhunters are aggressive. Since I put my cell phone number on my online resume (the last time I updated it was over two years ago), I still get calls.
However, nothing was odder than the contact I got the other day. This time I received an email from a headhunter. However, this person hadn't even read my resume! Instead, they said they 'read my blog'. How freaking weird is that!?! Who the hell 'reads my blog'? I know Adam does. Hi Adam. I know John does. Hi John. I know Rob does. Hi Rob! These are my friends. They read my blog because I might announce a party, or upload some new photographs which include a picture of them, their family, or some people I have met in my life.
What I can't quite fathom is the notion that some stranger would read my blog. How completely weird is that!?? And boring too! Just like this post is boring because there are no pictures and I can't find the USB cable for my camera. Boring..boring..boring.
What is even stranger is how could anyone even figure out what the heck I do for a living from reading my blog? I mean, you would know my boat is broken. You would know I'm into New Age belief systems. You would know I'm a Freemason. But you sure would have a hard time figuring out how passionate I am, or am not, about extreme programming practices or axis aligned bounding volume systems for swept volume tests. How do I feel about those topics? Well I would say a big yes and yes on both of them. This is the X-age. Extreme programming and let's do some shredding with teenage mutant ninja turtle kids through a big ass load pile of axis aligned bounding boxes.
I feel halfway obligated to say what I do for a living on my own blog just so I can set the record straight. Maybe I should update my resume so it doesn't look like I became a bum for the past two years. I haven't become a bum! I'm just slumming; in good company, no doubt, but slumming nonetheless.
Some startup company here in St. Louis decided to develop technology for games. So, I had a choice between moving to San Diego (not) and going to work for the company here. So I did. They make Fizziks for games. This is Newtonian physics, mind you; none of that lovely quantum mechanical stuff that provides room for ghosts, lucid dreams, or past lives. Just good old fashioned predictable Newtonian physics solved through penalty methods and a few iterations of a tight inner loop. You gotta love it. My job? Hell if I know. Occasionally I have to write mission statements to justify my existence. Everyone at work uses everything I write to do everything they do but no one at work, apparently, has any idea what it is that I actually do or what purpose that I serve. This is a long way from shipping a game let me tell you.
After my last mission statement I must have caught some traction because now they are defining the product I am allegedly working on. So, each day, I get a step closer to justifying my existence in time and space. All I know is if I were to delete all of the work I have done since I have been hired it would interfere with the work flow of at least three other people for more than a day. So I'm sure that makes it worthwhile.
Did I mention I like stream of consciousness rambling posts? A few weeks ago I got into a discussion with my children about quantum mechanics but it was a pointless exercise. They roll their eyes at me and claim I try to make their brain explode. Since I had not purchased any new physics books in several years I bought about four new ones. I was pleasantly surprised one day when I came home from work and saw my copy of "Conscious Acts of Creation : The Emergence of a New Physics" lying on the coffee table. I was so happy because this book even has math and equations in it. I asked my wife, "So they kids read my quantum physics book?" She, replied, "Yeah, they were looking at it." When next I saw Alex I asked him and his response was, "My friend and I tried to read it as a joke but after a page it made our heads explode."
How are the youth of today going to understand our future if they won't let their heads explode from time to time? It is all so sad.
On Sunday I flew down to Florida to get my son John enrolled in College. He is living right next to the Kennedy Space Center. I visited the Space Center but was quite disappointed. You see, I lived there in 1969 through 1971. I personally got to see Apollo 11-13 blast off. My father, an ex-Marine, was a security officer at the vehicle assembly building and my Uncle was a top engineer for NASA during the Apollo missions. I was looking forward to having my memory stimulated by the sights and sounds of those great days. However today when you go to the visitors center, at $37 a head, it is as if the Apollo mission hardly ever happened and is relegated as is a minor footnote next to the Space Shuttle, Mars Lander, and Space Station. The facility exists to promote their current projects and it is as if they are trying to play down the fact that....hey...we once actually landed men on another body in space and they drove around on it in a dune buggy!
My son is looking to make a fresh start at a college in paradise. I hope he has a great semester at school.
Much of my month of July was consumed with attending professional tennis in the form of World Team Tennis. It was quite exciting for me. My favorite part is when I got to take part in a Pro-Am where we club players get to play with the pros. This year we received an added bonus of private lessons with a world class coach. The near gourmet quality dinner afterwards didn't suck either. Next year I'm thinking about getting season tickets for four so I can take more of my friends.
Back to my job. My job sucks. I commute 80 miles a day, 40 miles each way. Traffic sucks. Commuting sucks. It is two hours a day of my life that are virtually worthless. I used to be able to work from home a couple of days a week and this helped a lot. However, about a month ago I was given two college interns from Zurich Switzerland. I also have a new hire, and we are a ton of things going on at work. I simply can't work from home and get my job done right now. The only thing that could help make up for it a bit is some international travel. I'm not one of those guys who is sick of travel yet. No, I don't want to go to LA. No, I don't want to go to India. But, pretty much anywhere else, I am game. Either because it is a place I enjoy traveling to, or it is a place I have never been before and I look forward to the new experience.
When your company sends you to travel somewhere you typically lose a day for travel on each end, simply because airports are such a zoo any more. This doesn't bother me, because I take advantage of that time to read or watch movies. I find this relaxing; certainly more relaxing than bumper to bumper traffic. Lately there have been some guys at work bitching, moaning, and complaining, about being 'forced' to travel to Europe. Meanwhile, I jump up and down in the back of the classroom, hand waving back and forth, begging the senior-manager teacher to pleaaaessse...pleaassee..send me. Apparently I'm not useful enough, or too useful, who knows..to be worth sending. I always try to generate nice follow up reports when I return from a trip and I rarely, if ever, cause international scandals so I can't quite figure out what I'm doing wrong. Who knows..maybe they just want me to program the damned computer and drive two hours a day. Maybe...that's what I'm supposed to be doing.
My job is weird. There are a bunch of Chinese people at work. They are all soon going to be leaving for China. Which will be weird too. I can barely communicate with them when they are standing two feet away. How's that going to be work when it is offset by thousands of miles and radically different time zones? I dunno. Maybe I need to fly to China for my next meeting?
An odd thing happened at work today with the Chinese people. There are sometimes as many as six of them around my desk at work. Mostly they are well behaved and don't interfere that much. However, sometimes they get lively and start talking in Chinese. They talk very fast...very...very...very..fast; both men and women. The women make funny squeaky voice sounds, very strange. They don't even sound human all the time but more like cartoon characters. Today something most have gotten them really excited. They are having a party tomorrow, so maybe that is what got them all going. Nevertheless, it became a virtual cacophonic symphonic orgy of Chinese chirping this morn. I figured, if you can't beat them join them. So, rather than just slip on my noise canceling headphones, I typed "Chinese lecture" into Google. After a few clicks I hit a website with a pile of MP3 files. I clicked on one at random, turned up the volume on my speakers, and soon my area began spewing its own stream of Chinese jabbering to join the chorus. This immediately initiated odd looks and then laughter from my co-workers. They gathered around my computer and listened into whatever nonsense was spewing from my speakers.
That's when something strange happened...
They got a little silent and the leader of the group, the one who spoke the best English, sort of ushered the rest away. I turned it off and asked, "What was all that about?" His response was, "That is *evil*. Evil religion. You cannot hear this in China. It is banned." You would have thought I brought pornographic images on my computer rather than Chinese gibberish.
Now this was just way too creepy for me so I let it drop. Later in the day I visited the website and followed some links to find out it was a series of lectures based on "Falong Gong" (or whatever the heck it is called). This is the first time ever, since the Chinese people showed up, that I got any sense or notion that they came from an oppressive society. Other than that they seem delightfully cheerful and quite worldly in terms of their technical skills and access.
Tomorrow they are having a going away party since most of them are returning to China soon. I am going to try to make it by. A few weeks back at an office event I tried to learn a handful of Chinese words but it was completely useless. I could try to mimic a word they said exactly and no matter how many times I repeated it they would claim I had it wrong. I did make them laugh at me quite a few times, so I suppose it wasn't a completely wasted effort.
Nothing has really been going on with my Freemason activities since we are dark in the month of July and August. However, installation of new officers is next Saturday and I am looking forward to getting into the ‘back of the line’. My son Alex seems to still be having great fun with DeMolay. Their community service project was a big success. They collected well over 500 canned goods and other items for the food pantry. Tomorrow night they are going to have a movie night and the whole group is going out to see “Batman Begins’ together.
The group voted to do a movie night for their next fund raiser and I have been volunteered to help put it together. I am very excited because this will be my first movie showing for a really large audience. I am going to show my IB-Technicolor print of “The Court Jester” on my new Xenon projector. This will be at the Masonic Lodge in Troy on September 17th. I am going to start showing classic Warner Brothers cartoons at 6pm. We will be selling popcorn, candy, and soda to help with the fund raiser. I am also going to have a couple of trivia contests and give out a some prizes. The lodge is a pretty nice venue and I think I could comfortably seat as many as a hundred people.
I just realized I have rambled enough. Rambling has its place and this place has had it. If I ever find the cable that lets me transfer pictures from my digital camera to my computer I may update my blog again.
If you are reading my blog and you are a personal friend of mine; why, hello. If you are reading my blog and I don’t know you; well, I have to say, that is freaking weird. If you are reading my blog and want to offer me a job; sure, go ahead. The ego enjoys a gentle stroking from time to time and it is always easy to turn down a job when you already have a really good one. Why, once the interns and the Chinese people leave I might get to work from home again a little bit more often and this job of doing things that no one understands what I do might be fun again.
Last time I checked in I think I was bitching about my boat being broke. My boat is still broke. I appreciate the feedback from people who have added comments to my blog suggesting how to fix it. Please, I implore you, show up with a toolbox this weekend and let me know when you fix the problem because, you see, my mechanic can't quite seem to figure it out.
Currently the boat is running fine at speeds up to 8mph, which is all I need to putter around the lake. All I really, personally, like to do is putter around the lake anyway. I hate throwing good money after bad and I just don't feel like spending any more money on the thing. I was only planning on keeping the boat for another two years at the most. Now I'm considering just buying a new one next year when the boat show comes around. Of course, that will depend on my job situation.
I sure could have a lot of jobs if I wanted to. It seems that if you type into Google 'game programmer resume' I must come up somewhere on the hit list. Maybe not number one, who knows, maybe it is number 1,615. Nevertheless, headhunters are aggressive. Since I put my cell phone number on my online resume (the last time I updated it was over two years ago), I still get calls.
However, nothing was odder than the contact I got the other day. This time I received an email from a headhunter. However, this person hadn't even read my resume! Instead, they said they 'read my blog'. How freaking weird is that!?! Who the hell 'reads my blog'? I know Adam does. Hi Adam. I know John does. Hi John. I know Rob does. Hi Rob! These are my friends. They read my blog because I might announce a party, or upload some new photographs which include a picture of them, their family, or some people I have met in my life.
What I can't quite fathom is the notion that some stranger would read my blog. How completely weird is that!?? And boring too! Just like this post is boring because there are no pictures and I can't find the USB cable for my camera. Boring..boring..boring.
What is even stranger is how could anyone even figure out what the heck I do for a living from reading my blog? I mean, you would know my boat is broken. You would know I'm into New Age belief systems. You would know I'm a Freemason. But you sure would have a hard time figuring out how passionate I am, or am not, about extreme programming practices or axis aligned bounding volume systems for swept volume tests. How do I feel about those topics? Well I would say a big yes and yes on both of them. This is the X-age. Extreme programming and let's do some shredding with teenage mutant ninja turtle kids through a big ass load pile of axis aligned bounding boxes.
I feel halfway obligated to say what I do for a living on my own blog just so I can set the record straight. Maybe I should update my resume so it doesn't look like I became a bum for the past two years. I haven't become a bum! I'm just slumming; in good company, no doubt, but slumming nonetheless.
Some startup company here in St. Louis decided to develop technology for games. So, I had a choice between moving to San Diego (not) and going to work for the company here. So I did. They make Fizziks for games. This is Newtonian physics, mind you; none of that lovely quantum mechanical stuff that provides room for ghosts, lucid dreams, or past lives. Just good old fashioned predictable Newtonian physics solved through penalty methods and a few iterations of a tight inner loop. You gotta love it. My job? Hell if I know. Occasionally I have to write mission statements to justify my existence. Everyone at work uses everything I write to do everything they do but no one at work, apparently, has any idea what it is that I actually do or what purpose that I serve. This is a long way from shipping a game let me tell you.
After my last mission statement I must have caught some traction because now they are defining the product I am allegedly working on. So, each day, I get a step closer to justifying my existence in time and space. All I know is if I were to delete all of the work I have done since I have been hired it would interfere with the work flow of at least three other people for more than a day. So I'm sure that makes it worthwhile.
Did I mention I like stream of consciousness rambling posts? A few weeks ago I got into a discussion with my children about quantum mechanics but it was a pointless exercise. They roll their eyes at me and claim I try to make their brain explode. Since I had not purchased any new physics books in several years I bought about four new ones. I was pleasantly surprised one day when I came home from work and saw my copy of "Conscious Acts of Creation : The Emergence of a New Physics" lying on the coffee table. I was so happy because this book even has math and equations in it. I asked my wife, "So they kids read my quantum physics book?" She, replied, "Yeah, they were looking at it." When next I saw Alex I asked him and his response was, "My friend and I tried to read it as a joke but after a page it made our heads explode."
How are the youth of today going to understand our future if they won't let their heads explode from time to time? It is all so sad.
On Sunday I flew down to Florida to get my son John enrolled in College. He is living right next to the Kennedy Space Center. I visited the Space Center but was quite disappointed. You see, I lived there in 1969 through 1971. I personally got to see Apollo 11-13 blast off. My father, an ex-Marine, was a security officer at the vehicle assembly building and my Uncle was a top engineer for NASA during the Apollo missions. I was looking forward to having my memory stimulated by the sights and sounds of those great days. However today when you go to the visitors center, at $37 a head, it is as if the Apollo mission hardly ever happened and is relegated as is a minor footnote next to the Space Shuttle, Mars Lander, and Space Station. The facility exists to promote their current projects and it is as if they are trying to play down the fact that....hey...we once actually landed men on another body in space and they drove around on it in a dune buggy!
My son is looking to make a fresh start at a college in paradise. I hope he has a great semester at school.
Much of my month of July was consumed with attending professional tennis in the form of World Team Tennis. It was quite exciting for me. My favorite part is when I got to take part in a Pro-Am where we club players get to play with the pros. This year we received an added bonus of private lessons with a world class coach. The near gourmet quality dinner afterwards didn't suck either. Next year I'm thinking about getting season tickets for four so I can take more of my friends.
Back to my job. My job sucks. I commute 80 miles a day, 40 miles each way. Traffic sucks. Commuting sucks. It is two hours a day of my life that are virtually worthless. I used to be able to work from home a couple of days a week and this helped a lot. However, about a month ago I was given two college interns from Zurich Switzerland. I also have a new hire, and we are a ton of things going on at work. I simply can't work from home and get my job done right now. The only thing that could help make up for it a bit is some international travel. I'm not one of those guys who is sick of travel yet. No, I don't want to go to LA. No, I don't want to go to India. But, pretty much anywhere else, I am game. Either because it is a place I enjoy traveling to, or it is a place I have never been before and I look forward to the new experience.
When your company sends you to travel somewhere you typically lose a day for travel on each end, simply because airports are such a zoo any more. This doesn't bother me, because I take advantage of that time to read or watch movies. I find this relaxing; certainly more relaxing than bumper to bumper traffic. Lately there have been some guys at work bitching, moaning, and complaining, about being 'forced' to travel to Europe. Meanwhile, I jump up and down in the back of the classroom, hand waving back and forth, begging the senior-manager teacher to pleaaaessse...pleaassee..send me. Apparently I'm not useful enough, or too useful, who knows..to be worth sending. I always try to generate nice follow up reports when I return from a trip and I rarely, if ever, cause international scandals so I can't quite figure out what I'm doing wrong. Who knows..maybe they just want me to program the damned computer and drive two hours a day. Maybe...that's what I'm supposed to be doing.
My job is weird. There are a bunch of Chinese people at work. They are all soon going to be leaving for China. Which will be weird too. I can barely communicate with them when they are standing two feet away. How's that going to be work when it is offset by thousands of miles and radically different time zones? I dunno. Maybe I need to fly to China for my next meeting?
An odd thing happened at work today with the Chinese people. There are sometimes as many as six of them around my desk at work. Mostly they are well behaved and don't interfere that much. However, sometimes they get lively and start talking in Chinese. They talk very fast...very...very...very..fast; both men and women. The women make funny squeaky voice sounds, very strange. They don't even sound human all the time but more like cartoon characters. Today something most have gotten them really excited. They are having a party tomorrow, so maybe that is what got them all going. Nevertheless, it became a virtual cacophonic symphonic orgy of Chinese chirping this morn. I figured, if you can't beat them join them. So, rather than just slip on my noise canceling headphones, I typed "Chinese lecture" into Google. After a few clicks I hit a website with a pile of MP3 files. I clicked on one at random, turned up the volume on my speakers, and soon my area began spewing its own stream of Chinese jabbering to join the chorus. This immediately initiated odd looks and then laughter from my co-workers. They gathered around my computer and listened into whatever nonsense was spewing from my speakers.
That's when something strange happened...
They got a little silent and the leader of the group, the one who spoke the best English, sort of ushered the rest away. I turned it off and asked, "What was all that about?" His response was, "That is *evil*. Evil religion. You cannot hear this in China. It is banned." You would have thought I brought pornographic images on my computer rather than Chinese gibberish.
Now this was just way too creepy for me so I let it drop. Later in the day I visited the website and followed some links to find out it was a series of lectures based on "Falong Gong" (or whatever the heck it is called). This is the first time ever, since the Chinese people showed up, that I got any sense or notion that they came from an oppressive society. Other than that they seem delightfully cheerful and quite worldly in terms of their technical skills and access.
Tomorrow they are having a going away party since most of them are returning to China soon. I am going to try to make it by. A few weeks back at an office event I tried to learn a handful of Chinese words but it was completely useless. I could try to mimic a word they said exactly and no matter how many times I repeated it they would claim I had it wrong. I did make them laugh at me quite a few times, so I suppose it wasn't a completely wasted effort.
Nothing has really been going on with my Freemason activities since we are dark in the month of July and August. However, installation of new officers is next Saturday and I am looking forward to getting into the ‘back of the line’. My son Alex seems to still be having great fun with DeMolay. Their community service project was a big success. They collected well over 500 canned goods and other items for the food pantry. Tomorrow night they are going to have a movie night and the whole group is going out to see “Batman Begins’ together.
The group voted to do a movie night for their next fund raiser and I have been volunteered to help put it together. I am very excited because this will be my first movie showing for a really large audience. I am going to show my IB-Technicolor print of “The Court Jester” on my new Xenon projector. This will be at the Masonic Lodge in Troy on September 17th. I am going to start showing classic Warner Brothers cartoons at 6pm. We will be selling popcorn, candy, and soda to help with the fund raiser. I am also going to have a couple of trivia contests and give out a some prizes. The lodge is a pretty nice venue and I think I could comfortably seat as many as a hundred people.
I just realized I have rambled enough. Rambling has its place and this place has had it. If I ever find the cable that lets me transfer pictures from my digital camera to my computer I may update my blog again.
If you are reading my blog and you are a personal friend of mine; why, hello. If you are reading my blog and I don’t know you; well, I have to say, that is freaking weird. If you are reading my blog and want to offer me a job; sure, go ahead. The ego enjoys a gentle stroking from time to time and it is always easy to turn down a job when you already have a really good one. Why, once the interns and the Chinese people leave I might get to work from home again a little bit more often and this job of doing things that no one understands what I do might be fun again.
Comments
I am occasionally reading your weblog. Let me start here: I know Adam M. very well, I once had him over for an interview at Havok. Instead of joining, he started his own company. You are working for that company. I find it interesting what kind of links there are between people I'm working with. Your website provides interesting information.
I spotted pictures of Remi Arnaud, a collegue of mine at Sony, Matthias Muller, Adam, and other guys from Zurich. Then Richard Tonge of course, we know eachother since Mathengine/Havok times.
Anyway, I like your blog. Luckily we spoke on the phone, and over some Collada forums, so I'm technically not a stranger to you, nor a friend (although I found out, in America they call people a friend quite easily).
Last comment, on the rocket thing: pity it lookes like is not actively being developed anymore. It would have made a nice visual debugger.
Erwin Coumans
http://continuousphysics.com/Bullet/phpBB2/index.php
Even in your case, though we don't directly know each other, there is at least an association through mutual friends. And, anyway, now we do 'know' each other by consequence of these exchange.
As far as Rocket goes, actually we are gearing up development on it as a product now. However, the focus in the near term is on physics scripting for hobbyists and students.
I agree, a visual debugger is a great idea. Anything more, I'm pretty sure I'm not allowed to say...