Back to Work
There is something about your first day back at work after a long
vacation. It really makes you realize how much you really liked doing
nothing and how you really hate working. To make things even better I
came back to find out I'm on call. I've been lucky in that I've only
had two jobs that required me to be on an on call rotation. The first
place had a very detailed process and thankfully I was brought on to
replace all those existing applications with new ones I was writing.
So when the dreaded pager would go off or a help desk ticket arrived I
had a good idea on how to get things resolved. That's not the case at
my current company. I get tickets and I have no idea what I'm supposed
to be doing with them. I just end up going over to the guy that knows
the app and ask him what to do. Thankfully we don't get many tickets.
I did have one victory this week at work that made me happy and hopefully will give me some more name recognition in the company. We have a architecture council her that reviews any new tech that wants to used in the company. Since we are planning to use JSF, Ajax4Jsf and RichFaces on my current project we needed to present our choices to the council. Most of these folks work out of our St. Louis location so it's a meeting done via conference call. My division's java arch has been working with me to define what tools we will be using for this project and he lead the presentation. I prepared a slide showing a matrix of out needs and the several flavors of JSF we could choose from. I walked though the slide in the presentation and took all the hard ball questions from the other architects. It seems some of the folks decided to let their team members view the matrix before and had some questions. In the end it went very well and I was able to fend off all that opposed me. At the end of the project we will present our best practices for the tools and hopefully get a little more exposure.
Ok, that's enough about work for now. I was able to sneak away this week and see 'Pirates of the Caribbean:At World's End' with a friend. Now there has been a lot of talk about how this one was not as good as the other two and how great the first two movies where. Well that's just rubbish. First off the first two where not all that great. I liked the first two but they were just good movies and not much else. They all have good story lines with some nice wists to them but they are really just an excuse to watch Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann) for three hours. She is a very attractive woman and makes the whole series of movies worth watching again. Obviously the three movies do a great job of tying all three movies together and manage to complete the story very well. The end does leave the possibility of a fourth movie if demand suggest one should be made. So far the box office sales have not been as strong as the past movies. The movie is still a good three hour action flick that will not disappoint as long as you are just looking for a fun summer movie experience.
I've been playing a lot of Forza as it is very good and damn frustrating. I've finally gotten my driver up to level 20 and have completed the Proving Grounds set of races but now I'm getting into the harder cars to drive. I'm really having to hold back and not try to get out of the gates as fast as i possible can. I love driving with the throttle pressed all the way down but I find I tend to lose control of the cars with more HP and crash into walls. I have been learning and have gotten better at taking curves by breaking hard before the turn. It just seems I'll put together a clean race then lose it on a lap and be forced to start over. I do think I am finally getting used to the wheel and the forced feedback. I may actually play an online game against strangers. I just need to make sure I'm racing in a car I can handle.
One game I've been looking forward to now has a demo on Xbox Live, Overload. You get to play as a evil lord with command of these little goblin creatures and you get to terrorize the fantasy world of the game. It sounds like Oblivion but you get to play the bad guy. I'm doing to download this and the Shadowrun demo. Shadowrun is a FPS after the CounterStrike model where you play team games and buy weapons and skills before each match. It should be interesting but may just suffer from bad timing and a lack of game modes. The game released the same day as Forza and right in the middle of the open beta for Halo 3.
Overall it's been a busy week and it's nice to be able to get this post finished. I've been recently asked why I don;t write more about development anymore. Mostly because I was venting about the junk I used to have to be saddles with at mt last company. The new place is better and doesn't make me bitter anymore. In also have not been doing a lot of new cool stuff. I'm finally starting to look at new tech at work and will definitely write about my experiences. I am also doing a lot of research for my next big project at home. I think I have to make some goals and get my Xbox Live Arcade project up and running. I've been thinking and thinking about how I want to write this game and it's a bit ambitious. With the XNA studio I can develop a game on my pc and test it out on my 360. The basic package is free and really only requires me to buy a book and figure this stuff out.
I did have one victory this week at work that made me happy and hopefully will give me some more name recognition in the company. We have a architecture council her that reviews any new tech that wants to used in the company. Since we are planning to use JSF, Ajax4Jsf and RichFaces on my current project we needed to present our choices to the council. Most of these folks work out of our St. Louis location so it's a meeting done via conference call. My division's java arch has been working with me to define what tools we will be using for this project and he lead the presentation. I prepared a slide showing a matrix of out needs and the several flavors of JSF we could choose from. I walked though the slide in the presentation and took all the hard ball questions from the other architects. It seems some of the folks decided to let their team members view the matrix before and had some questions. In the end it went very well and I was able to fend off all that opposed me. At the end of the project we will present our best practices for the tools and hopefully get a little more exposure.
Ok, that's enough about work for now. I was able to sneak away this week and see 'Pirates of the Caribbean:At World's End' with a friend. Now there has been a lot of talk about how this one was not as good as the other two and how great the first two movies where. Well that's just rubbish. First off the first two where not all that great. I liked the first two but they were just good movies and not much else. They all have good story lines with some nice wists to them but they are really just an excuse to watch Keira Knightley (Elizabeth Swann) for three hours. She is a very attractive woman and makes the whole series of movies worth watching again. Obviously the three movies do a great job of tying all three movies together and manage to complete the story very well. The end does leave the possibility of a fourth movie if demand suggest one should be made. So far the box office sales have not been as strong as the past movies. The movie is still a good three hour action flick that will not disappoint as long as you are just looking for a fun summer movie experience.
I've been playing a lot of Forza as it is very good and damn frustrating. I've finally gotten my driver up to level 20 and have completed the Proving Grounds set of races but now I'm getting into the harder cars to drive. I'm really having to hold back and not try to get out of the gates as fast as i possible can. I love driving with the throttle pressed all the way down but I find I tend to lose control of the cars with more HP and crash into walls. I have been learning and have gotten better at taking curves by breaking hard before the turn. It just seems I'll put together a clean race then lose it on a lap and be forced to start over. I do think I am finally getting used to the wheel and the forced feedback. I may actually play an online game against strangers. I just need to make sure I'm racing in a car I can handle.
One game I've been looking forward to now has a demo on Xbox Live, Overload. You get to play as a evil lord with command of these little goblin creatures and you get to terrorize the fantasy world of the game. It sounds like Oblivion but you get to play the bad guy. I'm doing to download this and the Shadowrun demo. Shadowrun is a FPS after the CounterStrike model where you play team games and buy weapons and skills before each match. It should be interesting but may just suffer from bad timing and a lack of game modes. The game released the same day as Forza and right in the middle of the open beta for Halo 3.
Overall it's been a busy week and it's nice to be able to get this post finished. I've been recently asked why I don;t write more about development anymore. Mostly because I was venting about the junk I used to have to be saddles with at mt last company. The new place is better and doesn't make me bitter anymore. In also have not been doing a lot of new cool stuff. I'm finally starting to look at new tech at work and will definitely write about my experiences. I am also doing a lot of research for my next big project at home. I think I have to make some goals and get my Xbox Live Arcade project up and running. I've been thinking and thinking about how I want to write this game and it's a bit ambitious. With the XNA studio I can develop a game on my pc and test it out on my 360. The basic package is free and really only requires me to buy a book and figure this stuff out.
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