I've been sober for a year.

Wel, not totally sober - I've had a beer every now and then, but compared to the amount that I used to drink it's hardly worth mentioning.  In all honestly, I could probably count the number of beers I've had in the last year on one hand (using base-2).

I say that I've been sober for a year because I haven't been drunk for a year.  And compared to how often I used to be drunk, that's something worth mentioning.

Our first week in Vietnam has come and gone, and it's still great.  We just got back into Saigon from a trip to Nha Trang, which is an ocean-side city about 45 minutes (flying) from Saigon.  It was fantastic.  We spent two whole days sitting in front of the ocean on beach-chairs drinking cheap drinks and eating fresh seafood.  The first night, we swam in the ocean just as the stars were coming out.

The second day, the ocean was angry.  There's a tropical storm (neoguri) off the coast that's making its way towards Vietnam, and the ocean was pretty choppy as a result. 

Of course, the trip ended with a splash, too.
Most of us got sick last night (Emmi was the only one who didn't).

Pictures (of the ocean, not of the sick) coming soon.

For those of you playing along at home, that's a reference to a series of blog entries I did in a past life about a trip I took to China.  It has nothing to do with this post.

Emmi and I have landed in South Korea, and we're sitting outside of an internet cafe that has apparently forgotten to secure their wireless internet connection.  We haven't slept yet, and we're probably bio-hazards after having been on an airplane for 12 hours... and we have another 5 hours flight later tonight.

I'll post more soon, but for the people who I didn't think were important enough to e-mail about my arrival, I wanted to let you all know that I'm not dead (Marc...).

but that seems like an awful lot of work. 

I have nothing immediately new to report.  I've been working far, far too much.  Though, I'm on the brink of an exciting vacation.  Emmi and I are leaving for three weeks in Vietnam next Monday.

I'm sure I'll have some good things to talk about once we're there.

I just watched the new Knight Rider movie (which was essentially the pilot episode for a new series), and wow.  I really enjoyed it.  I just recently spent some time watching the original series, and it was just as disappointing as every other show I really enjoyed as a child.  I wish I could watch those shows with the same amount of enthusiasm and suspended-disbelief as I did while I was growing up.  Of course, it would help if those shows weren't stupid to begin with.

Anyway, yeah.  The Hoff is looking old.  Really old.  I mean, I assume he was wearing makeup to look older than he actually does, but still.  Damn.

Conversely, I really like the look of the new K.I.T.T., who was also likely wearing makeup, but really pulled it off well, I think.

I have absolutely nothing to write about, but I'm not going to let that stop me from making a blog post, seeing as how I haven't made one for a while.

I've found this really cool application for my iPhone that looks for Wi-Fi/Cellular towers in the area, and uses that information to triangulate my location.  It's from Navizon, which is much better than the crappy Google Maps thing that came out with 1.1.3.  Anyway, there's a new link on the left-hand side of my blog that you can click on to see where I am, based on the triangulations of the last 15 minutes.

So, you know.  If you're stalking me, this should help you out.

Also, I have a fever.

There's really nothing as dorky as playing a game like Saint's Row - where you're supposed to be a modern tough-ass gangsta, going around town and generally kicking ass and chewing bubblegum - and replacing the sound track with They Might Be Giants songs.

I just had a shootout with a rival gang to the sounds of "Clown town."

Sometimes I even amaze myself.

Have you noticed how we're almost to the point where we could communicate entirely by sending each other hyperlinks to websites?

It's a solemn and holy day of the year, folks.  All the better to reintroduce myself to blogging, I guess.  I would, as is typical form, explain to you all the reasons why I have not blogged anything lately, but I don't care and I know you don't care, so let's just skip it all, shall we.  I took a blogging vacation, much like an American high school student takes a trip to a foreign country and tries to broaden their horizons, but only ends up getting drunk for the first time, sleeps with a hooker, gets crabs, and has to sit next to a 400 pound German woman on the plane ride home.

And now as I step from the terminal and go back through blogging customs, declaring only a itchy crotch, I see the soil of my home country and think to myself "why am I doing this again?"

Anyway, it's Christfuck, the day when we celebrate the birth in that little town so many years ago.  No, not that one.  The one Elvis sang about.  You know, that kid in the ghetto?  Yeah, that guy.

Seriously, though, I'm here in Portland with Emmi's family, and I'm having a great time.  It snowed today, which was unexpected and added a wonderful and uplifting mood to an already wonderful holiday.  I'll get back to the blogging thing later on, and I'm sure I'll have some more crap that doesn't make any sense for you to read.  For the rest of the day, I'm just going to spend time with a wonderful family.

I uploaded some pictures to my Flickr account.

I went back to the midwest for my cousin's wedding over the last weekend.

During the reception dinner, my dad and I were sitting at a table with some of the groom's family.  It's important to note that they seem to be a very wealthy family, and are members of a country club, which is where the dinner was being held.  They did their best to include Dad and I in their conversations, and went through the requisite bits of inclusive conversation:  name, rank, and serial number.

One woman was asking my dad what he did for a living.  After dad announced that he was recently retired, she talked with him about it for a few minutes, and then asked me what I do.

They were very nice people - please don't get me wrong, I'm not trying to say anything bad about them.  But when the questions came to me, I couldn't help but respond the way I did.

Without really thinking, I said "I'm a pirate."

"A pilot?"

"No.  A pirate."

My dad looked at me, and - with a second or two delay - started laughing, then explained what it was that I really do for a living.  The woman laughed a bit, and then asked some follow up question about it that I don't remember.

So there.  

Yarrrrrrr!

I've added more pictures from Lance's wedding to my Flickr page.

That is all.

I waited in line to buy OS X Leopard tonight, and I'm really unimpressed.

It's pretty - prettier than Tiger, just by a little bit - but this supposed list of 300 new features is a bunch of bullshit.  Or catshit.  It's some sort of shit.  There are four of those features that I have actually found a use for.

Time Machine is not one of them.  I don't have an external drive, and I don't plan on getting one, so I'm not going to use Time Machine.  Worthless to me.

The four things I'm using are:

The translucent title bar, and translucent dock, the Spaces (because that's revolutionary...), and the tabbed command prompt.

Those are the most useful ones.   Except for the fact that I rarely if ever use the command prompt on OS X.  If it were on Windows, it would be a killer app, as far as I'm concerned.

Seriously - all that other shit that they were talking about in this thing?  Not so much.  Maybe I'll find a useful application for it someday...

There really isn't anything that makes this more special than Windows Vista. 

I recently became the proud owner of an iRobot Roomba.  For those of you who aren't familiar with what this is, it's a little robot hockey puck looking thing that wanders around my house and vacuums it for me.  I typically let it go do it's thing every other day, setting it to do it's daily chore just as I'm leaving for work in the morning. 

But that's not why I'm writing this post.  I'm writing it because I'm having a bit of a parental experience with it.

The first night I had this robot, I turned it on and let it vacuum while I sat one the couch watching it for a little while.  Eventually, I turned the TV on and started watching that, while sort of keeping my attention to the robot randomly.  After a few minutes, I became engrossed in whatever drivel was on TV and stopped paying attention to the robot.  The last time I had noticed it, it had gone off into another room of my apartment, and that had been several minutes ago. 

It slowly dawned on me that, though I could still sort of hear the robot, I didn't actually know what it was doing.  Maybe it was in trouble, or stuck on some loose laundry.  Maybe it was ripping up something that it shouldn't have.  I didn't know. 

I leapt off the couch and into the other room where the robot was innocently circling an area of concentrated filth. 

And it was then that I realized:  I had become a cyber-parent.

God forbid it ever starts dating.

Update:  And it appears that my parental instincts weren't totally without merit. 

I came home from work last night to find my little robot stuck under the refrigerator with the belt for my robe wrapped around one of it's wheels. 

Kids!

... and also tired.

I'm also bored with being tired and tired of being bored.

As the astute observer that I'm sure you are, you've no doubt come to the shocking realization that I've not written anything here in tens of days.  "Why?", you ask yourself.  "What's going on here?"  Is it because I don't love you anymore?  Have I found a new blog that's younger and more attractive than you?  Have I grown wary of your nagging and constant failed attempts at masonry?

Nay, the reasoning, I assure you, is something far more insidious. 

And by "insidious", I mean "tacky".

And by "tacky", I mean "slathered with gravy".

And by "slathered with gravy", I mean "tacky" again, because that's what I meant the first time.

I have nothing to write about, so I haven't been writing.  I've been busy with work and have little else that I want to bend your virtual ear with at the moment, so I'm really just writing this post because I feel some sort of misplaced moral obligation to do so.

And now that I've satisfied said obligation...

Since I'm brand new to this Intartubez thing, I just got myself a flickr account.

Actually, I got it because there's an application for the iPhone that automatically uploads pictures taken with the phone to a flickr account.  Oh yeah, I got an iPhone, too.  I really have nothing to say about either of these right now, but it's been a fucking long time since I've blogged, so I'm fucking blogging.

Fucking.

Anyway, here's a link to my new flickr account. There are some pictures from Lance's wedding on there right now, so you know... look at em.

I'm sure I'll forget where I got these, but they're pretty cool.

So, memo to myself:  You got them here.

Some idiot on Digg posted a story a while ago about what software he installs after a fresh install of Windows.  I recently did this myself, so I figured I'd jump in, too.

• Windows Vista Ultimate
• Windows Update
• Windows Update again (seriously... why couldn't it have done everything the first time?)
• Office 2007 (Outlook only)
• Windows Update *again*
• UltraISO
• Virtual PC 2007
• Firefox
• Ultramon
• Woot Sidebar Gadget
• Weatherbug Sidebar Gadget
• Live Search Maps Traffice Sidebar Gadget
• Zune software
• VistaBoot Pro 3.3
• Windows Home Server connector
• Powershell
• Windows Live Messenger
• Windows Live Mail

I really hate that fucking song.  Come to think of it, I've developed a strong distaste for a lot of the "Oh-woe-is-me:-I'm-lonely-tonight-and-I-wish-I-had-a-nice-girl-who-could-bake-while-I'm-out-with-my-chums" style songs of the early 19x0's.

Another day at work in a week wherein I've spent far too much time here as it is.
I'm not really complaining, though.  I'm here by choice, since my deadline passed on Friday and was extended indefinitely.  The truth of the matter is that I've become obsessed with solving this series of problems.  I want to be the hero who did this.  And I'm afraid to let someone else do it because they'll do it wrong (read: not the way I would have done it). 

The lifecycle of a change-and-test for the stuff I'm working on is a painfully long 3 hours (down from over 9 earlier this week - go me), so I brought my Nintendo Wii in to the office with me so I can play Metroid games while I wait for a build to complete (read: break). 

I beat the first Metroid game in under four hours, so I got to see the "special" ending.  It wasn't really worth it, but it was something I had longed to see when I was just a youngin'   On to Super Metroid - I'm playing with walkthroughs because I want to actually complete the games sometime in the next three years.  And wouldn't you know it (here comes a bum... wait, no...), I managed to find what is potentially the worst walkthrough in the world.  Walkthroughs should be easy to read and understand.  This one contains such jems as "I think something was back there.  You might want to go check."  and "Don't ask me how to get up here.  Try stuff.  I've seen people do it."

So, instead, I decided to watch a speed-run video of Metroid Prime.  Some dude did it in 55 minutes with 100% completion.  Now I'm almost too ashamed to start playing again.

That's how long I worked for yesterday. 

I'm going to sleep.