Why didn’t anybody tell me my site didn’t work in IE? It should be fixed now, and should look slightly better on both browsers as well.

It’s always strange to wake up and come outside and see one’s car frozen over in Texas, because just about a month ago the heat was unbearable.

What’s really strange is to leave work and come outside and see one’s car frozen over. Yesterday morning was cold but not freezing. Around noon the temperature dropped and we started getting freezing rain. I had to scrape my windshield before I drove home, which was a new experience.

While the freezing rain has abated, the temperature hasn’t risen, so the roads are frozen over this morning. I’ve no doubt that any Minnesotans reading will laugh, but we Texans get skittish during cold weather…something about slick roads and lots of big, heavy trucks just makes us not want to drive.

So no school and no work! Hopefully I will get to work on the RPG today.

Was feeling better, until I woke up this morning. Now I’m feeling much worse. Still went to work…Hit & Myth isn’t going to get done with me sitting at home, and I already took a sick day last week. Still, I did manage to get something done on the RPG this weekend, and there will be an update later today, I promise.

Sorry about the lack of posts and the lack of progress on the RPG. I haven’t been feeling well the last couple of days. Hopefully something will happen over the weekend.

Well, no wonder I’m not getting any comments! I had comments set to “must register” but wasn’t allowing anyone to register! I’m setting comment registration back to off for now…if I get the occasional comment spam I’ll just clean it. I’d much rather hear from the people who are reading this blog…if they are still out there 🙂

Thanks to Chris at Convene for alerting me that comments weren’t working.

I love this time of year. Summer’s iron grip has finally been broken. The trees are still mostly green, but the weather is cooling off and could occasionally even be described as “chilly”. I always feel that my brain works better once the weather cools off. And it was also at this time of year that I first came to Austin.

I had an article telling the story of my journey towards game development on my last site, but that site is now defunct and I don’t feel that article was very well-written anyway. So settle in for a spell, folks, and listen to my life’s story.

We had some weird power problems over the weekend…our breakers kept tripping. We’d turn them back on, they’d trip again. Trouble was, sometimes they’d trip right away. Sometimes they’d wait up to three hours before tripping. This was actually worse than having no power at all, because we’d turn them back on, wait about an hour, think everything was going to be fine, get situated doing what we wanted to be doing, and then bam – power back off. It made for a frustrating weekend.

I ate some MREs this week. (Quick definition of an MRE: An MRE is a self-contained meal in a plastic pouch. The pouch contains smaller retort pouches filled with various foods. MREs are designed to last a long time at room temperature and are used by the military and disaster relief agencies.)

Now, you may be thinking, “Why would you willingly consume an MRE? Soldiers complain about them all the time!”

A couple reasons. First, I’d always been curious about them – it’s just an interesting concept. Second, all MREs have about the same number of calories and are balanced meals, which means they could help dieters. (Which I’ll get to in another post soon.)

Having eaten four MREs (clam chowder, meat loaf, pork loin and cheese tortellini), I can honestly say that today’s MREs taste pretty good, actually. The only one I didn’t like was the cheese tortellini. They are also pretty darn filling for such a small amount of food (the main entre of an MRE is eight ounces and the side entre is usually about six ounces).

Which got me to thinkin’. At my last job, we had a frozen food vending machine in the break room. It had frozen meals, as well as ice cream bars and other frozen desserts. But the thing was always breaking down – either the refrigerator would break, causing everything to thaw and go bad, or the machine wouldn’t give you your meal because the vending spring malfunctioned. And in the end, all you got was a frozen meal.

Why not have a vending machine that serves food in retort pouches, like MREs come in? You could have main dishes and side dishes, you wouldn’t have to refrigerate them (food sealed in retort pouches lasts for three years at room temperature), you could have more variety, the machine would work better, and the food would taste better. They’d taste even better than MREs do because they wouldn’t have to be made by the lowest bidder.

Why hasn’t anyone done this yet? Heck, why can’t I buy retort-packaged food at the supermarket? As far as I know, the only company using retort packages for anything is Starkist for their tuna. I guess it’s probably because everybody is set up to use cans and switching over would be a big cost…but I’ve got a feeling someone is eventually going to bring retort-packaged food to the consumer market in a big way, and I think the market is going to respond very favorably.

“Life is very very short, and it’s important to give thanks for the things that are good.”
– John Linnel of They Might Be Giants, during their performance at Stubbs here in Austin

Hmmm…I’m going to come close to breaking my PSRD rule today (that is, I don’t discuss politics, sex, religion or drugs here). But I can’t help it.

I love my country. There, I said it. I love America and I love being an American. I am fully aware of just how damn lucky I was to be born and raised here. I think that the values that this country was founded on, while not perfect (because nothing is), give the greatest number of people the greatest opportunity to get what they want out of their lives.

And I think that the best way to show my gratitude is to take full advantage of the opportunities I have here. I know that I haven’t been. I resolve to do better in the future. I also resolve to continue to teach my children why it is that America succeeds when so many other countries and peoples fail, so that when they grow up they may succeed, and in doing so contribute to America’s success rather than detract from it.

I hate that crap. I woke up this morning and checked my email and discovered that someone had commented! Yay! Then I realized all three comments were comment spam. Boo.