Jaime Says: ;,,,,,,,,,,k kllq, ccoo , ..-p..4plllllllllmlr],43\t;88888vfyDVFzvxf44rr mmmmmmmmmmmmm j-0 `R456559LL.34449978AB888V4c44./p` 0jvvf 6f6k7h 8 uhjbhhbgjn

;,,,,,,,,,,k kllq, ccoo , ..-p..4plllllllllml
r],43\t
;88888vfyDVFzvxf44rr mmmmmmmmmmmmm j-0 `R456559LL.34449978AB888V4c44./p` 0jvvf 6f6k7h 8 uhjbhhbgjn

Jaime eats it! Jaime has started eating real food, and he's absolutely adorable doing it. So far he has tried sweet potato (not yam) and banana. Kind of indifferent to the sweet potato, but he's nuts for banana. He concentrates so hard on the spoon when you hold it in front of him, but he doesn't open his mouth until he grabs the spoon and your arms with his hands and then shoves it towards his face with reckless abandon. More than anything else, these feedings make me wish I had a digital video recorder. The boy loves to eat.Work's been a bit of a bummer lately as my laptop is misbehaving. Last friday, I lost the boot sector on the hard-drive, and I had to use a ubuntu live cd to access the contents and save them to an external hard disk (couldn't get the network working). Then I re-installed Mandrake and managed to recover everything (my /home dir is a separate partition and wow did that make things a snap). I wish the /var dir had likewise been a separate partition for the database I had - I had to spend most of Friday and Monday recovering Firebird and the databases.And then, starting yesterday, the laptop was back to its old tricks of freezing up several times a day. With the hard-drive superblock failure and these continuing problems even after reinstalling the OS, we're fairly confident there are hardware problems, so I am sending it back to our IT guy to get a more thorough checkout and maybe send it back to Dell for service. Which means I'll be without the laptop for a fairly long time. I've decided to bring my home computer in and use that since it's very fast and not being used - I haven't turned it on in well over a month.I'm reading the book Lost Mountain currently, an incredibly despressing account of the process of mountaintop removal in the Appalachian mountains and the damage it causes. It is things like this that just make me shake my head when people talk about how much coal there is in the US as a possible substitute for oil in the future. How much environmental degredation is acceptable to maintain our lifestyles? I'm afraid there is no limit. I think it is the first book I've read whose real-world assertions I can actually go and verify.

Jaime has started eating real food, and he's absolutely adorable doing it. So far he has tried sweet potato (not yam) and banana. Kind of indifferent to the sweet potato, but he's nuts for banana. He concentrates so hard on the spoon when you hold it in front of him, but he doesn't open his mouth until he grabs the spoon and your arms with his hands and then shoves it towards his face with reckless abandon. More than anything else, these feedings make me wish I had a digital video recorder. The boy loves to eat.

Work's been a bit of a bummer lately as my laptop is misbehaving. Last friday, I lost the boot sector on the hard-drive, and I had to use a ubuntu live cd to access the contents and save them to an external hard disk (couldn't get the network working). Then I re-installed Mandrake and managed to recover everything (my /home dir is a separate partition and wow did that make things a snap). I wish the /var dir had likewise been a separate partition for the database I had - I had to spend most of Friday and Monday recovering Firebird and the databases.

And then, starting yesterday, the laptop was back to its old tricks of freezing up several times a day. With the hard-drive superblock failure and these continuing problems even after reinstalling the OS, we're fairly confident there are hardware problems, so I am sending it back to our IT guy to get a more thorough checkout and maybe send it back to Dell for service. Which means I'll be without the laptop for a fairly long time. I've decided to bring my home computer in and use that since it's very fast and not being used - I haven't turned it on in well over a month.

I'm reading the book Lost Mountain currently, an incredibly despressing account of the process of mountaintop removal in the Appalachian mountains and the damage it causes. It is things like this that just make me shake my head when people talk about how much coal there is in the US as a possible substitute for oil in the future. How much environmental degredation is acceptable to maintain our lifestyles? I'm afraid there is no limit. I think it is the first book I've read whose real-world assertions I can actually go and verify.

Painting Paradise I've taken up painting. Y'know, artistic painting. Yeah, like Rembrandt. Sort of. Well, ok, I don't really think of it as art. More craft or hobby. After work, I go home, play with my son till he falls asleep, and then I get ou my easel and canvas and acrylic paints and start painting - very therapeutic and fun. And, I happen to be liking the results, which is very surprising for me - I'm usually my worst critic. But, it seems with painting, my attitude is "I can't draw, I can't paint, I have a terrible sense of color and aesthetics and visual design, so therefore anything I paint is going to suck in most people's opinion, right?" Right, so I don't care that it's terrible - I like it the same way a tone deaf person likes his own singing and to hell with the rest of you.I get to turn my inner critic off because he's no more qualified to judge than my inner artist.The paints are great fun to play with, though I wish I could use oil because I've noticed my oil pen just covers completely whatever I draw over with it, whereas the acrylics let some of whatever's underneath show through - sometimes requiring 3-4 coats to be completely opaque. But, oil would interfere with the nice easy relaxing nature of the activity - what with the turpentine and smell and all. Fortunately, I've found not all acrylics are equal - some are thicker and more opaque (and more expensive) than others. I'm hopeful that just buying better quality paints will improve the experience.I made a couple of quick "paintings" for Jaime when he was born. Actually, they are just made with sketch paper and permanent marker, but it gives an idea of my "art" :-)

I've taken up painting. Y'know, artistic painting. Yeah, like Rembrandt. Sort of. Well, ok, I don't really think of it as art. More craft or hobby. After work, I go home, play with my son till he falls asleep, and then I get ou my easel and canvas and acrylic paints and start painting - very therapeutic and fun. And, I happen to be liking the results, which is very surprising for me - I'm usually my worst critic. But, it seems with painting, my attitude is "I can't draw, I can't paint, I have a terrible sense of color and aesthetics and visual design, so therefore anything I paint is going to suck in most people's opinion, right?" Right, so I don't care that it's terrible - I like it the same way a tone deaf person likes his own singing and to hell with the rest of you.

I get to turn my inner critic off because he's no more qualified to judge than my inner artist.

The paints are great fun to play with, though I wish I could use oil because I've noticed my oil pen just covers completely whatever I draw over with it, whereas the acrylics let some of whatever's underneath show through - sometimes requiring 3-4 coats to be completely opaque. But, oil would interfere with the nice easy relaxing nature of the activity - what with the turpentine and smell and all. Fortunately, I've found not all acrylics are equal - some are thicker and more opaque (and more expensive) than others. I'm hopeful that just buying better quality paints will improve the experience.

I made a couple of quick "paintings" for Jaime when he was born. Actually, they are just made with sketch paper and permanent marker, but it gives an idea of my "art" :-)

Three Basic Game Types Domination-positive - Games where winning leads to winning. Chess and Stratego are example domination games because the side with the advantage usually is able to leverage the advantage to create more advantages. Most wargames, games where opposing player pieces are "eliminated" are domination games.Domination-neutral - Games where winning creates no leverage for increasing the advantage of the winning side. Many sports are like this - ie, leading in scoring creates no inherent advantage in future scoring.Domination-limiting - Games where winning leads to losing, or where taking a lead makes it difficult to progress to winning. Sorry, Aggravation, Parchesi and many multi-player games are like this, where as you start taking a lead toward winning, your continued progress to finish off the win becomes more and more difficult, often allowing come-from-behind victories to be the norm.Obviously, this is only one of many ways to categorize games. Why I've made this division will hopefully become clear in future blogs.

• Domination-positive - Games where winning leads to winning. Chess and Stratego are example domination games because the side with the advantage usually is able to leverage the advantage to create more advantages. Most wargames, games where opposing player pieces are "eliminated" are domination games.
  
• Domination-neutral - Games where winning creates no leverage for increasing the advantage of the winning side. Many sports are like this - ie, leading in scoring creates no inherent advantage in future scoring.
  
• Domination-limiting - Games where winning leads to losing, or where taking a lead makes it difficult to progress to winning. Sorry, Aggravation, Parchesi and many multi-player games are like this, where as you start taking a lead toward winning, your continued progress to finish off the win becomes more and more difficult, often allowing come-from-behind victories to be the norm.
  

Obviously, this is only one of many ways to categorize games. Why I've made this division will hopefully become clear in future blogs.