Books, Books, Books

Received 4 books from Amazon recently. Each one focuses on a different aspect of web development, from jQuery to MySQL. I already know about several of the topics they cover but it never hurts to refresh your memory. The best part is I know reading them will directly benefit my job. Maybe I’ll become the most well-read developer there, who knows?

Car Troubles

Today I found myself sitting on the side of the highway, my car having shut off for no apparent reason. Turns out it was corrosion on the battery cables — we cleaned them and it started running fine. Might look into purchasing a new battery, though.

Clear Sights

The car I drive is a blue Ford Taurus. Ever since I bought it, there’s been a large crack running from one side of the windshield to the other. It has always more of an eyesore than a threat to my safety, so I put it off for awhile. But not anymore! I finally got around to having a new one installed.

I fully expect it to be cracked tomorrow.

Passing the Time

These past few days, I’ve been playing through Luigi’s Mansion: Dark Moon. It’s pretty fun, but I would have preferred to roam freely throughout each mansion rather than a mission system. That being said, the final mansion was fantastic. I’ve heard many people complained about the bosses not being very fun. I can see where the criticisms come from — the second and third bosses didn’t really make use of the gameplay concepts introduced in their respective levels. The only boss I didn’t like was the Big Boo fight just before the last two bosses. It was way too tedious catching all those boos. That didn’t detract too badly from the overall experience, though. I’ll definitely look forward to any future installments with Luigi and his new pet Polterpup.

Dogs and Such

Several weeks ago, my younger sister found a puppy in a trash can about a block away. We have since taken it in and named him Reese. After a few weeks of caring for it, I can see why the previous owners threw it out. He gets into everything. He’s torn up papers, shoes, bowls — everything he can get his teeth on. Considering his size, there’s a lot he can get his teeth on. He definitely should be an outside dog, yet my family insists on keeping him inside for some reason. Oh well. It’s their house — if they want to see it get torn to shreds, so be it.

Web Development

I’ve started learning how to use Umbraco for my new job. Apparently, we’re 1 of the 17 Umbraco-certified companies in the United States. It’s always interesting to learn new things, and this CMS is no exception. I’ve been watching the free videos online and have considered purchasing the book from Amazon, but I’m not sure if it’s for the current version. I know that I will eventually need to know ASP.NET and C#, so I’ll be looking for some online resources and books for those as well.

Goodnight, Sweet Sim

EA has managed to destroy yet another series. This time, Simcity takes a stake through the heart with always-online DRM. It’s all very sad, as the game looked quite promising. I was particularly excited to see that the engine was capable of visualizing all data layers at a 1-to-1 level. Of course, leave it to EA to for a disastrous launch, courtesy of their awful Origin platform. If they would have just let the game run in singleplayer – as intended – this would have been the best entry to the series.

Losing Wisdom

Just had 2 wisdom teeth removed. Right now I’m a little sore, but I’ll manage. This is the first step on a long road to repairing my teeth from several years of neglect. I suppose I deserve the pain for not taking better care of them, but that’s going to change from now on. There are 3 teeth on the upper-front of my mouth that need to be crowned and a retainer brace that will be removed from the bottom. Once that’s done, my mouth should look much better.