Archives: News from 2006
January
Jan 7, 2006
New Gallery Page!
After many sessions of whining from Willow, I finally made the time to fix the gallery page. You may remember that a while back I introduced Dueling Monkeys Galleries 2.0, a custom built gallery based on XML that I wrote in an effort to better familarize myself with XML and it’s various applications. Geek talk aside, I just didn’t finish it. I really hate doing that, but I’m awful good at it (gallery, movie exchange, im client, message board upgrades, etc.).
February
Feb 20, 2006
Merry February Day!
Last week I was in the office for 67 hours. I thought about going in Sunday as well as Saturday just to get it above the 70 hour milestone just so I could say ‘hey, I’ve worked a 70 hour week before!‘, but for some reason when I woke up on Sunday, I just didn’t feel like it. Go figure.
March
Mar 3, 2006
Willow Monkey: Private Investigator
So I would tell you a very funny and well-written story about the fantastic adventures that I had last night, but there is a problem. The problem is, of course, that I have no idea what happened last night. However, I have noticed a couple of indicators around the house that suggest what might have happened. This calls for the talents of a private investigator! I’m going to describe all of the clues I found (unfortunately, I couldn’t find Wayne’s camera, so I don’t have pictures), and you can use your powers of intuition to determine what really happened. Hell, your guess is as good as mine. So c’mon gang! We’ve got a mystery to solve!
April
Apr 9, 2006
Return of the underling
Wow… I exist!
I did promise wayne to update like a month ago, but then forgot how, didn’t really bother trying to find out, and now we end up not in smarch weather but smapril which will be the 14th month now that we are past the possibility of using the 13th (erroneous simpsons allusion).
May
May 5, 2006
Word of the day: Rube Goldberg
For those of you who don’t know already, my brother has finally moved to Shanghai China to be married. That is a pretty exciting event; far more exciting than anything I can report on from my life. However, I’m going to bore you all by reporting on my life anyway; sorry. So last time I posted (man, that was a long time ago, wasn’t it?) I said that we were almost done with the big push at work. Well, I was wrong and we still aren’t done now almost a month and a half later. In theory, we will be shipping Gamebyro 2.2 very soon, but that is a statement I could have made for the past month, so take it for what it’s worth. Testing and documentation is probably the least enjoyable part of my job, and it is what I’ve been doing for the past month or so. At least the new office is pretty nice. I’ve got a lot more desk space and it is easier to keep the place clean. When not working, I’ve been doing some fun stuff. I’ve been enjoying Oblivion on my new big TV. When I don’t have enough contiguous time to play Oblivion, I play Mutant Storm and Geometry Wars. Wayne and I are now ranked in the top 100 co-op tally mode players on all of Xbox Live. They are apparently working on a sequel to Mutant Storm, which I’m excited about. The weather is nice enough for Volleyball now, so I’ve been doing that recently. One of my co-workers and I go climbing every once in a while as well, which is great. I also still like to drink and catch stuff on fire. My most recent victim was an easter peep. In not-so-good news, I have to replace the roof on my house. Not only does it have a leak, but the shingles have hit their lifespan anyway. Fortunately, I do live in a family of construction workers, so hopefully we’ll be able to knock it out ourselves pretty quickly and affordably. I’ve been doing a wee bit of drawing and modeling recently, but I don’t have anything I can show off. One creative thing I can show off, however, is the new recipe I invented this week! I am happy to present Fried Noodles – mmm. To wrap up this little post, I will say this: watching rube goldberg machines is fun and all, but to really get the most out of it, you need crazy japanese-built machines that have little jingles to accompany them, and comes complete with a rube-goldberg theme song and dance half way through. Enjoy.
May 13, 2006
the China connection
well here i am, writing you all another awesome update on DM, except this one is even awesomeerer because it is coming from CHINA! yup, thats right, Willow was not kidding when he said i moved to china. thats right, MOVED to china… to get MARRIED. I’ve been here a month now, settled in pretty well. not married yet, but i’m taking some language classes and trying to get a job. in between all that i’m having lots of fun being a househusband… NOT! i have made it my No. 1 priority to get a job asap so that i can hire a maid and NEVER DO DISHES AGAIN! or laundry, or sweep the floor, or clean the bathroom… or wipe the kitchen… or…
May 20, 2006
It's been a while
I’ve neglected the front page for a while now. As always, the message board has kept us afloat. We appreciate it. I did fix the webstat pages and they are available here. I wish we had those from long ago. :(
June
Jun 13, 2006
Spells of Fury
So I am going to tell you something that I did a while ago. Before I state what I did, I am going to preface by saying that the following statment is literally true:
July
Jul 4, 2006
Summer Vacation!
So the week before last, I took my first vacation from work in a year and a half. I will chronicle the story of this journey here so that it will remain on the (web)pages of history forever!
Jul 15, 2006
Hello from Pittsburgh
Hello everyone! It’s good to see you all again. And by that I mean, it’s too bad that I am in Pittsburgh instead of Brad’s pool party. But, if I weren’t in PA, I’d be in SC, so sorry Brad, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I flew in (my first commercial flight, yay!) here Friday afternoon to do some testing for work. It hasn’t been very hard work, only 5 hours a day, but it has been hot and dirty. No, I’m not secretly a porn star. We’ve been collecting samples of mercury emissions from a power plant. The place we’re at has a 1000 ft smoke stack, but we are sampling from 300 feet. I hope we can go to the top to get some good pictures, but the guy who runs the place is hesitant to let us go that far up because the elevator is 24 years old and often breaks down. If it were to break down while we were up there, we’d have to lower all of our heavy equipment down by rope, and then climb down the ladder! Nevertheless, we do have some pretty good pictures from 300 ft that I’ll try to remember to put up. I must say that Pennsylvania has some beautiful countryside, and Pittsburgh is not bad looking either. I have to tell you a funny story from this little trip… There is a small pizza joint here in town (town is a small place outside of Pitt where we are staying) that we have been visiting quite frequently. The food is cheap and they have a bar serving equally cheap beer. Saturday night was dollar domestics! They were only 10oz, but $1 on a weekend is pretty good. Anyway, this cute girl who was our waitress before we moved over to the bar came up and told us about the deal. When my boss asked for a Yuengling, she replied "Yuengling isn’t domestic". We tried to tell her that we were pretty confident that it was, but she insisted on asking the bartender, who proceeded to laugh at her and at the same time seemed like he wanted to smack her with the spine of the Pittsburgh phone book. For those of you who don’t know, Yuengling is brewed in PA just north of Philly. Anyway, thats my story and now I will go to bed because I got up to work at 6:45 this morning after a decent night of drinking (this has been the way of life for the past few days) and I have to do both again tommorow.
August
Aug 12, 2006
Starships!
Hey all! Time for a quick update on what I’ve been up to these days. Every once in a while, I manage to fit time into my schedule to work on a little personal project I have going on. This project is to create a simple space dog fight game. I have been working on the thing forever, but progress is very slow because I usually only end up doing about one day’s worth of work per month; if that.
September
Sep 16, 2006
September's News Update!
That’s right folks, its time for our monthly news update. I remember back when we first got started the goal was two to three per week, but now our policy is at least once each month, so here it is.
October
Oct 6, 2006
The Beach, China, and a Movie Review!
I’ve been at the beach since Wednesday night dog and house sitting while my aunt and uncle are cruising around the BVI’s. Normally I would say that the beach is a very unproductive work environment, but I spend many hours at a time without human contact and the weather has turned cold, so there’s not much else to do other than watch Poseidon and write a review about it. To those of you who say "You’re at the beach, stop complaining" I say "You’re right, I’ll move on".
November
Nov 11, 2006
Ni Hao!
A lot has happened since my last update. Mainly, I went on a trip to visit my big bro in Shanghai China. There is so much to write about! So much that I don’t really want to do that much writing. I’ll try to let the pictures do most of the talking and just write about the most memorable parts.
December
Dec 16, 2006
The Holidays
The Holidays are here again, and boy they sure did sneak up on me this year. I can’t say that I’m terribly excited about them this go round, and I won’t go into why, but aside from helping my grandma put up her pre-lit Christmas tree – the lights were my favorite part :( – the Christmas Dueling Monkey’s menu is all the decorating I’ve done. Today (the 16th) was the first time I’ve been out to do any shopping, and it was, as expected, crappy.