An entry from Texas

Yes, I know, I'm staggeringly infrequent, but I'm busy as hell. You have no idea. Between work, kids, exercise, and learning how to do VR stuff, I have no time left to just relax. Blogging is, as you can imagine, pretty far down on the list, but I like having these to look back on, especially as the kids grow up.

Tyler, first, has turned 4. He's growing bigger all the time, asking more questions (and more questions that make sense) and is generally more pleasant than he was at three. This doesn't mean he's not still a complete monster at times. (Like today, for example). But the trendline is going up, which is good. He's starting to read basic books, which is nice. He's hard to motivate, though. If he doesn't know he likes something, he's loathe to try it. Reading, therefore, is mostly a function of figuring out how to motivate him to want to try something new. He does it little bits at a time, though, and we have a lot of time to continue raising him, so I think odds are good he'll get it down eventually. Especially when he figures out that reading is the key to figuring out how to play video games. I think that will help a lot.

Casey is growing up fast too. This week, in fact, she's starting her transition up to her toddler class! It's sort of a baby+ class, actually, she only has 5 kids in her class, and they are all kids that have moved up over the past couple of weeks, so the fact that none of them can really walk means it's not a full on toddler class. But, critically, this does mean our day care bill goes down a little bit, which is nice. This also means, potentially, that we have passed the maximum amount we will ever have to pay for day care. (Unless you count college as day care, which might be a fair assessment.)

Her first birthday party up in Washington was very nice, and we all got together for an impromptu Preecs family reunion. She had a blast eating through her cake (she went at it with a lot more gusto than Tyler did) and was very smiley at everyone. She's a quite smiley lady.

Her molars are finally coming in, and she isn't happy about it at all. Luckily her pacifier does a good job of soothing her past mouth troubles, but that whole process looks pretty uncomfortable, so I can understand some fussiness and clinginess.

She's very close to walking, too. She wants to come up to you and grab your thumb with one hand (one hand only, she was doing two for a while, but has realized she can get by with one and that frees the other hand to grab stuff, so now she insists on one hand. Unless you're helping her stand up.) and walk around the house grabbing things.

She's starting to communicate a little bit too. Whenever she drops things over the side of her high chair she says “oh oh”. And when she asks if she is all done she sometimes says “Aaaa Daaaan”. Or sometimes “aaah aaaaah aaaa daaaa aaaa”. It's a work in progress. But it's seriously cute.

I'm working on new stuff. I've decided I want to be a VR developer. Or perhaps just a Technical Artist, which is a profession that I've just made up that involves doing the technical side of creating visual effects in computer graphics. Things like animation, automated modeling, stuff like that. I don't know if that's something that people actually do, and frankly I don't know if it's something I really want to do either, but It's something I'm trying, and it feels like progress towards something, which is important, because it gives me hope. Whether or not anything actually comes from all this work is less important, at times, than feeling like I'm just doing something to advance myself in a direction of better happiness. As opposed to just...stagnating.

To this end, I attended a VR (Virtual Reality) game Jam a few weeks ago. What is a game Jam? Glad you asked. Video games are, at base, computer programs. And a Game Jam is when people get together for a concentrated period of time to see how much 'game' you can make in just a couple of days of work. The things that come out of them are often very rudementary, proof-of-concept things, but some serious games have come out of game jams, and it forces you to see if your game concept works, and allows you to get good feedback on it.

I didn't go to create my own VR game. I went for two reasons. 1) to Meet People and 2) To see if I could help on someone elses game in order to increase my experience with Unity programming. (Unity is the software that allows you to program and script your game. It's what most everyone is using to create things for VR.)

It was incredibly stressful, but I'm super glad I went. I was able to hang with people that clearly had more Unity background than I do, and I got to make VR beer pong, which isn't going to set the world on fire anytime soon, but it was a simple, easy-to-understand game concept, and I was able to help and learn a lot about what I do and what I don't know how to do in Unity. Plus we got to demo our game to a bunch of people, get some good feedback, and play around with nifty VR equipment that won't be on sale until later this year. I felt pretty fancy. There's still a lot of work to do if I'm going to try and make a serious career out of this, but like I said, it's progress, and it feels like moving forward.

I'm working on another VR music video (in my 'free time', so VERY slowly), I'll try to post some screen shots of things, I'm sure moms and dads of all generations would love to see my early, early prototype stuff.

Micro news!

Going camping this weekend. Should be hot, but also *s'mores*.

Jess is still awesome at hockey.

I've been running some pretty long distances lately. 3 miles used to be my limit. Now a 'short run' for me is around 4 or 5. My record long run is 11 miles. I think I'll try to do a half marathon in the fall sometime when it's cooler.

I usually weigh less than 200 lbs now. Which is pretty impressive. If I ever get down to 190 I'll be at high school weight. Except, of course, with more muscle now.

Casey is getting weaned off of bottles and has grown out of her cloth diapers. This vastly reduces the amount of chores I have to do when I get home. Kids still are a lot of work, though.

There are a lot of video games coming out, and I don't have the time to play almost any of them. That's how I know I'm serious about using my time for exercising and programming.

That will do for now. I'll try to update everything again before another three months go by. I'm sure there will be great stories to tell between now and then.

-N