The Programming Guy

Wow. First post of 2006. IN APRIL. God, I'm lazy. Taxes aren't finished either...

Anyways, I've got a new game project! And this time, it isn't some measly card game! And I'm not the only one working on it! W00t!

That's right, a new game shall be coming your way. We've just started, so don't expect anything soon. But there are several people working on it. I'm pretty much the only coder, but that's alright. That's not really where I want the help.

Anyways (boy, I say that alot), you can find specific info about the game here. So far we're calling it Project: Origins. It's a somewhat futuristic RPG that will, well, go check the site for any content updates. This page is my blog, not the projects, so I'll try to refrain from posting anything here about it (like that should be hard, considering my posting track record...).

So, yeah. Check it out.

Now that I've got Solitaire out of the way, it's time to move on to FreeCell. I've already gotten a start on it. I've even posted the current-but-crappy version. I'm not gonna give you a link, just guess where it is. If you can't find it, you're not as smart as I thought.

I've made a change or two to Solitaire, nothing major, and you can always find the latest version at the second link I gave you (read my comment on my previous post). I'll continually post near current versions of my FreeCell game, just so you can see whereabouts I am with it. Enjoy the crappiness!

You know how much I've been complaining about working and time constraints lately, right? Well, it hasn't been all bad. In fact, when I waste time, I've been wasting it building my new site or doing some other programming.

What is that other programming you ask? Building a game. Yup, a game. Calm down, don't get your hopes up. It's just my version of Solitaire. Give it a shot. If you have problems, let me know (reply to this blog or send me email). You can choose your deck back and it has double- and right-click functionality. I did skip out on all of the options though. No draw three, no outline dragging, no timed game, no scoring. Sorry, but I got lazy. I could probably add in draw three easily enough, but I'm lazy. I'm not even gonna attempt to do outline dragging, not with how my version works. Adding a timer would be nothing, but again I'm lazy. And I'm definitely not adding any scoring. I'm not gonna add their systems since I don't know how they work, and I'm not gonna take the time to balance a new scoring system. So pretty much the only thing you should send me is bugs. If it doesn't work or does something weird, let me know, I'll try and fix it.

I'm probably gonna try and build FreeCell, since that game is so much better than Solitaire. But I know it ain't gonna be easy, so don't expect it anytime soon. If I feel up to it, I might try creating some other card games, but we'll see what happens. I'll probably just get lazy and not do anything.

Work Continues...

...to suck. This project is really pissing me off. We're three weeks from implementation, and my superiors keep saying how much work there is to do, yet until this Saturday I was able to twiddle my thumbs all day waiting for something to do. Now my superiors' superiors are stepping in and helping us get on track. Why didn't they do anything six months ago when we started getting off schedule? Why was I the only one developing the project for the first six months, when we now have almost a half-dozen? Why did they wait until we're six weeks behind with three weeks to go to do anything to help the number one most important aspect of this conversion implementation?

Because now THEY'RE the ones who have to fess up if the project fails. Aww. Poor babies. Maybe if you'd have, you know, MANAGED the fucking project well enough from the beginning it wouldn't have turned out like this. They deserve the blame for it because until now, I have no idea what they've done for the project. I don't want my project leader to get fired for this, none of it was his fault. He was slammed with so much other bull besides the project, then had to completely take over when my boss flaked out, all the while being pounded on by his superiors, who sat there and said get it done, but did nothing to help.

Ugh. No wonder I was sick last week.

Work Continues...

...on my website. I'm slowing adding stuff for users to do when they join. I still don't have it hosted, so don't ask where it is. I'll get to that when I get enough stuff working.

One of the things I've been working on is the ability for users to submit news. I've also got my own format codes that you can insert (like BB codes), and it looks really good. They're fairly easy to do, and I can add more. You can submit up to 20,000 character articles (that includes the formatting codes), but the on-page character counter is incorrect in Mozilla. Not sure how I'm gonna fix that (it doesn't count linefeeds like it should). Oh well, I'm just going to leave that for now. Next thing to do is create my administration pages to allow me to review and post the submitted articles.

Also, the submit news page is only available to super users. I haven't actually decided what a super user is or how you become one, but you need to be one to submit news.

Work Continues...

...on games. Somehow I'm managing to find time to play games. Not alot, but some. I'm down to the last mission of RCT3: Wild!. My friend keeps bugging me to play Battlefront 2 online, but I haven't yet. I really don't have the time whenever he wants to play, and I just don't care about playing online. I have also been replaying some of Star Wars: Republic Commando a few nights ago.

Work Continues...

...on my new Yahoo! 360 page. I'm actually kind of liking Yahoo 360. It's not too bad. Not that I needed another blog, but I tend to follow my friends through the web.

Work Continues...

...on actually paying attention to this blog. I'm finally starting to blog a bit more often. I think it might have something to do with me wanting to vent my frustrations about my job. No, wait, it IS because I want to vent my frustrations about my job. Man. I'm never doing a data conversion again. From now on, I'm only building new systems.

Oh, and one final thing: I haven't gotten paid for a month. Yeah.

Holy no updates, Batman!

Seriously people, I don't think I can get any lazier with these updates. I guess I'm just not a talker.

Don't fret, though; I still do things even though I'm not telling you about them. There are some main reasons why I haven't been here in so long. Work was a big one the past few months. I moved into an apartment with a friend just over a month ago. A new girlfiend has eaten up my last few weekends. To name just a few.

Ugh. Work. You do know it sucks, right? Ummm... Yeah. No, trust me, it's highly unlikely that your work sucks as much as mine did in the past few months. Without going into too much detail, I'll just say that there were a few... *ahem* legal problems with my boss and his partners, leaving me wondering whats going to happen to our client's project and my next few paychecks. Yeah. I'll just leave it at that, for fear of legal retribution >_<.

Then there is our client, where I spend all of my working time. I've been on this project for well over a year now, and it's starting to show. I have no energy whatsoever to do anything at that place. Maybe that's why I haven't posted anything in a while... And the project's not done yet, oh no. I'll be there till AT LEAST mid-January, possibly as late as March next year, depending on how well the project fares once it goes live. Oh joy. I really need to stick to short projects from here on out. "Yeah, sure, I'll do a project for you, as long as I don't need to talk to you after six months." Yeah right, like that's going to happen.

Then of course there is my new girlfriend. She unfortunately has been working at a grocery store for over five years (I worked at that same store for just over three), and she really hates the people there. I can understand though, because she works with all of the high school students, and, well, they're just dumb. And getting dumber every day. Seriously people, the dumbness of our society is starting to scare me. *shudders* Anyway, she lives out by my parent's house, so we really can only see each other on the weekends, since it's over an hour drive one way. I'm trying to get her a job somewhere out by me, but it isn't going too well, considering she doesn't really know what she wants to do at this point. But oh well, we'll figure something out.

Anywho, I do still continue to game. I know I'll leave something out, but it's been three months, so give me a break. Ones that I can think of right now: Age of Empires 3, SSX On Tour, Star Wars: Battlefront 2, Roller Coaster Tycoon 3: Wild!, Musashi: Samurai Legend. I haven't played as much AOE3 as I should have, I think my only Home City is still under level 15. I've been playing alot of Roller Coaster Tycoon 3 lately. I finally finished off the Soaked expansion's missions, and I'm about half done or so with Wild. I'm starting to get the hang now of Battlefront 2, I just completed my first Galactic Conquest last night. SSX On Tour, I really can't remember how far I am, I believe I'm ranked 40 or 50 something in the rankings, but I haven't played in a while, it was getting pretty tough. Musashi: Samurai Legend was a fun offshoot a few weeks back.

Besides work, games, girlfriends, and moving, I have done a few other things. My roommate and I found this awesome arcade/sports bar called Springz. They have the best lazer tag area I've ever seen, and their go-karts power-slide like nothing. It rules. An awesome place to waste, er, spend my money.

Also, I have found some time to work on personal programming projects! No kidding! If you can't guess, it has something to do with the title of this post. That's right, I'm working on a new version of my site! I linked an early version a few posts back, and said I would eventually do it in ASP.NET. Well guess what, I am! It's looking pretty good so far, and once I get DSL at my apartment, I'll try hosting a version for people to mess with.

The new version of my site is coming along fairly well. First off, you can create an account on it! You won't have access to all of the sections unless you create an account. My side menu is in working order, being dynamically generated (based on whether or not you're logged in), and I've added a more defined tabbing structure so you can actually navigate the thing somewhat. I've built up some of the odd pages like the links and stuff I know pages, since they're mostly static anyway.

I'm currently adding some administration functionality so I can manage the menu, users, news, and other items from the page itself, rather than another program or just messing with stuff behind the scenes. The next step after that will be to start creating some content, most likely starting with news posts (kinda like my blog, but more official, and most likely on a schedule, or something resembling one).

If you've looked at my side menu, you'd notice I have gaming, programming, and Mindstorms sections. I'm most likely NOT going to list all of my games in the side menu, there really isn't any reason too with how I'm planning the gaming page. And I haven't thought of any new sections yet, but that's not a big issue yet. I'm just going to start off simple, and build up when I want something new.

Phew. Three months was too long to remember all of this. Remind me to update more often.

PS. Yes, the title is spelled that way to be funny.