I've been keeping busy lately, to the detriment of my blog. Currently I'm learning the ins and outs of the Magento e-commerce system, as well as game development using XNA. The latter, being an altogether new platform for me, is proving more difficult than the former. But we do what we must, even if it seems overwhelming. Speaking of overwhelming, I got the bright idea today to visit the French Quarter for Mardi Gras. Our 4th one since we moved to the area.

Greetings, everyone. First off I'd like to commend the folks at Kingston for doing a fine job of handling business. Some months ago the memory in my work computer (a whopping 1GB) was replaced with a 2-GB kit that turned out to be a mixed blessing. While the increase in memory did, in fact, speed up my computer, it suddenly began crashing several times a day. After some trial-and-error I removed one of the sticks and the crashes stopped, though the previous slowness understandably returned.

I made one New Year's resolution that I do intend to keep - it involves content. So here goes. It's bloody cold outside. That is all. Okay, maybe that isn't all. But seriously, if I wanted to be cold, there are a whole ton of other places than south Louisiana I could live. I don't live in those places. So what gives? I get up and it's freezing outside, and I'd been promised increasing temperatures. The problem is this: I can't justify buying clothes appropriate for unseasonably cold weather when it only typically gets cold enough for such clothing a few days a year.

I accidentally, as they say, the old site, and so the migration to Drupal has been inadvertently accelerated. So here we are. I've been pretty busy lately, for a change, trying to get some things squared away so that I can start on new things. One thing I've recently begun toying with is a new (to me) operating system called Plan 9 From Bell Labs. Touted as one of the most obscure OSes in existence, it struck me as a challenge I was compelled to meet, and I've installed it on a few different platforms in the last couple days.

I have been truly remiss in my posting duties this past... dear God, almost 2 years. What has been going on, you may (or may not) ask? SSDD, for the most part. I recently relocated the site to a new server and have been meaning to once again overhaul it completely. Stay tuned.

I have a bone to pick with some people about flawed logic. I recently heard someone defend smoking marijuana because "it's natural". Now, the right and wrong of such behavior goes beyond the scope of this rant; what's at issue is the reasoning involved in its defense - a little consistency is in order. As it happens, ricin is a deadly poison used in chemical warfare that is - you guessed it - naturally-occurring. Are we therefore to conclude that ricin is perfectly safe? It is, after all, natural. No thanks. I'll pass.

I spent much of yesterday going through the entire site and squashing the remaining xhtml bugs still plaguing the other pages. I've had the front page valid for months, but apparently it never occurred to me that the rest of the site was still so bad. Well, as of last night, I THINK the entire site is valid XHTML 1.0 strict. Now I get to go tackle an IE positioning bug. Bubye.

Here I am. True to form, I meant to post after I moved 2 weeks ago but haven't managed to do so until right now. I relocated on August 5 to the New Orleans area, to take a PHP programming job at a computer shop here. So far, I like the area, my new apartment, and my job. It's rather nice to have a job that I don't have to be ashamed of. It's also nice to be able to go to work, park myself in a chair, and not have to get back into the car until it's time to go home. My car was getting tired of driving around all day. My fuel costs have gone down dramatically, already.

In my constant effort to provide a service to humanity and (mostly) entertain myself, I have created a crossword puzzle helper. Hopefully someone other than myself will find it useful.

So it seems that it's been nearly 2.5 months since my last post. Been busy. Yeah. That's my story, and I'm sticking to it. As usual, if it's not one thing, it's another. But I shall once again attempt to be more diligent. I've been involved in some new projects lately, and hopefully things here will be looking up. Yesterday I had a friend tell me about a game that apparently has been around awhile, even though I've only just become aware of it.