On Q&A, some guy asked "Does RPG have a future in the software industry".  The question was tagged "software", "programming" and "ibm".   There were 3 answers:

Obviously, two of the answers were dealing with Role Playing Games, and one talking about RPG the programming language.  My first programming job was at an RPG shop, and while I never actually programmed anything using RPG, I got to hear a lot about what a great future there was for RPG and the AS/400, and how I should stop messing around with "toy" computers.  As far as I know, they are still using it.

My answer is #2, but question #3 got "best answer".  I hate it when that happens.

I guess this is a sign that I'm getting old.  Pretty soon I will be as boring as the old programmers who love to tell you how easy we have it now, and how they would work for days writing a program and putting it on punch cards, and how if you mixed them up, your whole program wouldn't work, etc, etc, etc.

I found a copy of Comcast's dress code at Consumerist today, it's very interesting.  For example, while at work, you can wear sneakers is you have to work on Fridays or a weekend, but you can't wear them during the rest of the week.  Shorts are never acceptable.  They also have a nice table telling what will happen to any young anarchist who openly flouts the rules:

First Offense:   Verbal Warning
Second Offense: Written Warning
Third Offense: Final Warning
Fourth Offense:  You're FIRED.

I thought our dress code was draconian:  You must cover the naughty bits, and you have to wear something on your feet.  The "wear something on your feet" thing is actually fairly new, and is used by some employees as further evidence that The Man is keeping us down.

Having dress codes spelled out in such detail isn't really the problem, the main problem is that a company that thinks it's important to come up with a policy like that is probably focused too much on trivia, and not enough on fulfilling their mission (unless the mission is to create busywork for as many people as possible)

Anyway, the full article is here: Leaks: Skorts Are Never Appropriate At Comcast - Consumerist

I've always been hoping that since I've never won anything in my life (i.e. raffle, lottery, etc) that I was set to win something big.  You know:  300,000,000.00 lottery, trip to Hawaii, etc.  Today, I won a raffle for a cardboard Master Chief, the main character from Halo3.  Everyone at work thought it was the coolest thing ever, and Eric and his friends are all convinced that I have the best job in the world.  On the downside, I guess my chances of winning the 300,000,000.00 lottery are reset. 

(I understand that my chances of winning the lottery are actually the same as they were before, so dont write in to give me a lesson in statistics.  I'll plug my ears and sing show tunes until you shut up (by the way, that's a GREAT way to end fights with your wife:  she'll be so disgusted that she'll give up.  Works like a charm))

Here is Eric posing with the Master Chief.  As you can see, it's huge.  Eric thinks it's awesome.  It's kind of weird that I am the only Microsoft employee in the state of North Carolina who hasn't played the game yet.  Hopefully, our xbox will be repaired soon.

Tonight  Halo3 gets released.  Like everyone else at Microsoft, I'm ready to get it and start having fun, BUT my xbox360 died last week, and it's getting fixed.  I don't think I could get away with buying another console.  As such, I will be the only person at work tomorrow.  On my team at work, one guy "sprained his ankle" and one is "going for a motorcycle ride".  Yeah right.

My big sister's neighbor is in Iraq with the 82d Airborne, and I am sending him a copy so that the troops can have a computerized battle when they are done with the REAL battle.  There's irony in there somewhere.

So, tomorrow when everyone is having a good time, I will be staring at the wall.  I'm so happy.

This article in USA Today says that college seniors scored an average of 54.2% on this test.  See if you can beat the Harvard average of 69.6%.

Some of the questions are ridiculous ("Which of the following are the unalienable rights referred to in the Declaration of Independence?), but some were kind of hard ("What is a major effect of a purchase of bonds by the Federal Reserve?")

I got a 95.  I didn't know the answer to the Federal Reserve question, one on Plato's Republic, or the proper definition of "Balance of Power"...and I don't agree that their answer is right.   Who said that a degree in History wasn't good for anything?

I'm always amazed at how 4 kids can come from the same two parents can be so different.  At my house, we have "The Geeky One", the "The Extrovert", "The Princess", and Jake.  Jake is known as "The Sick One".  Every time my co-workers hear that I have a sick kid at home, they say "Jake again?".  He's only 4, but he's been in the hospital 3 times for pneumonia and various other kid diseases.  Once, he went to the hospital when I was in Bangalore visiting a customer, and once he went when I was in Bristol visiting another customer.

So, this morning when I was heading downstairs (at 0515) to go to work, I heard Jake sort of whimpering and crying in his room.  I went in, and he was sitting up, crying, and with an obvious fever.  I took him downstairs and gave him a shot of Motrin, and then let him sit on my lap while we watched Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles AGAIN.  Luckily, Jennifer is in town this week, so she stayed and took care of him today.  He seemed pretty normal this evening (running around and wreaking havoc as usual), so we think he's over it.  Since tomorrow is MY day to stay home if necessary, I've been doing the "Hurry Up and Get Better" dance and hoping it works so I can go to work tomorrow.

(We have lots of dances here... we have the Snow Dance, the "Hurry up and Get Better" Dance, and the perennial favorite, "The Superior Dance")

OK, I know this is really geeky, but I love my new monitor:

The one on the left is a 30", and the one on the right is a 24".  I had just the 30" on for a while, but I really can't deal with just having one monitor anymore.  I'm spoiled.

I make it a habit to watch what the kids do on their computers.  I keep hearing parents say "but they know more about computers than me"... I don't have that problem yet.  I keep the computers in the attic right out in the middle of the room, and I purposely didn't have their rooms wired with Ethernet.

Anyway,  this video is the kind of thing that Eric and his friends look at. In a few years they will be looking at pictures of people shooting bottle rockets out of their butts and wet t-shirt contests, so I am kind of happy with this stuff.
  

We got season passes to a local amusement park, Carowinds, this year.  Until today, we had only been once, which made the tickets really expensive.  It was a perfect day for the trip:  not too hot, and the park was not at all crowded.  We got to go on whatever rides we wanted, and didn't have to wait for anything.

We took Eric's buddy Kyle with us.  They are two peas in a pod:  they are both obsessed with Star Wars, Legos, video games and Harry Potter.  Eric has a hard time making friends, so I'm glad that he found someone in our neighborhood who he gets along well with.

I put some pictures up at loytty.com.  All of the other times I have been to Carowinds it's been very crowded, and I haven't really enjoyed it that much.  Today was awesome though.  It's still outrageously expensive, but at least this time we got to have some real fun.  We'll probably get season passes again next year.

Alex is very into High School Musical.  It's kind of nice, because he is totally un selfconscious about it, and will sing and dance along with the show; it's cute.  If you've never seen or heard of HSM, it's a Disney movie (and it's sequel, High School Musical 2) about some high school kids in a play.  It's very bland and 'safe'.  Since the kids don't watch TV at all during the week (we are the MEANEST PARENTS EVER for enforcing this) their TV time is valuable on the weekends.  Alex at least, always ends up watching High School Musical.

This morning, when I was checking my newsfeeds, I saw that the main actress was fired by Disney for having allowed someone to take a decidedly un-wholesome picture of her.  My thoughts on this are:

1) Whoever took the picture and then put it on the Internet is a complete scumbag.

2) Everyone should take a class before they are let loose on the Internet about how digital content can be copied and spread all over the place. 

3) I'm glad I don't work for Disney.

4) I'm really really REALLY glad that my days of doing embarrassing things in public were BEFORE they could be photographed and put on the Internet for people to see for the rest of my life.

And no, I'm not going to link to the picture.  If you really want to see, it's not hard to find.  Furthermore, the picture is not all that sexy; if the woman in it was not a movie star, it would be unremarkable.

The new monitor got here yesterday, and it's pretty neat.  Its kind of like sitting in front of an HDTV, but it sits about 2 feet in front of you, rather than across the living room.  I did not know that a Dual Link DVI cable plugged into only 1 DVI connector on the video card.  I was able to run the 30" and one of the 24"s side by side.  Does anyone know if an NVidia 8800 GTX 768MB will run TWO 30" monitors?  If so, maybe I need ANOTHER 30" to go with this one.

(Don't tell Jennifer.  What she doesn't know won't hurt me)

Now I can make my own motivational signs, like these and demotivators.