Owing to the previously discussed unexpected change to my employment situation, I actually considered bumping up my flight a couple of days and spending a couple of extra days in Florida prior to boarding the ship tomorrow, but ultimately I decided against it, mostly owing to the high cost of the airline change fees. To be honest, it was probably a good thing that I did, because I ended up having a couple of phone screens for potential jobs to deal with in that time. Besides, I am actually traveling with people this time around, so it was probably best to just stick to the original arrangements. I’m still thinking the return flight is looking a little iffy, but at least if we miss it I’ll have some company, right?

Anyway, from here in Houston it should just be another couple of hours of flight time to get to Miami, at which point I should be my usual nice and loopy self (I don’t know why, but I don’t think I’ve ever been down there without being somewhere around 36 hours of no sleep…). We board the ship tomorrow, and from there I should have some Internet, but very limited, so I may or may not post something along the way depending on how motivated I’m feeling about it at that point.

Given the relatively temperate climate of the Pacific Northwest, even in the middle of Winter snow is a fairly infrequent occurrence around here.  During most Winters here we rarely get more than 2 or 3 snow events, and most of them are relatively minor (at least unless you’re trying to drive in them, in which case you’re pretty much dealing with a horrendous mess no matter how much or how little snow actually ends up on the ground.)  Every so often we do get a major snowstorm here, but these are relatively rare, with the last really significant one being back in December of 2008.  The one we’ve got going on here right now doesn’t seem to be quite that bad (at least not here in Downtown Bellevue, I understand most of the really big snow totals happened to the North and South of here,) but it was still enough to close down all the schools and make a mess out of the roads. 

Fortunately, living in a walkable Downtown area means that even in the snow it’s not too terribly difficult to get around, even while leaving the car safely parked.  Even then, given a recent unexpected change in my employment situation (not that big a deal really,) I don’t really have anywhere to be right now anyway, so I can just stay at home and not have to worry about any of this.  Even so, after a while cabin fever does start to set in a bit, so I did took the opportunity to go for a little walk this afternoon and see how Bellevue is faring underneath all the snow.  After the jump, a look at a few scenes from a snow day in Downtown Bellevue.

One of the biggest surprises of the day is that in spite of all the snow we got here (which was only a fraction of the snow that some places got, especially further south) it really didn’t create a whole lot of traffic issues that I could see.  I’m guessing that this was mostly because the vast majority of people just stayed home (traffic on 405 and on the Downtown streets was for the most part pretty light,) but even the ones who did venture out into the elements didn’t seem to be having too much trouble getting around  In fact, the only cars I saw having trouble at all were rear wheel drive cars such as this BMW parked at the top of the 405 offramp.  Obviously not the ultimate driving machine in this weather…

For the most part, the roads (and the sidewalks) were pretty slushy, and a number of the outdoor stairways in Downtown were blocked off, presumably to keep people from cracking their skulls on things while trying to climb them. 

The Bellevue Transit Center, normally a beehive of activity on any given weekday, was practically deserted today.  In spite of this, the busses still seem to be running (albeit on revised snow routes that keep them off of big hills they might have trouble climbing in the snow.)  The truck parked on the sidewalk here was full of tire chains, several of which were being applied to busses parked at the Transit Center.

If you were looking for a place to sit down today, your options might have been a bit limited.

Surprisingly, in spite of the weather, Bellevue Square was open (albeit with an early closing time,) as were a majority of the stores in the mall.  And although the crowds were probably smaller than you’d expect on a typical weekday, the place wasn’t exactly deserted.  I suppose it beats being stuck at home if you can get there…

This should give you a pretty good idea of what Northeast 8th Street looked  like for most of the day.  I did see some plows going through here, but with the base layer of ice from last night underneath the snow,  it didn’t look like the plows were having too much success clearing things off.

Downtown Park had a surprisingly large number of people as well, presumably out to take advantage of the rare opportunity to play in the snow.

For some reason, I find that fountains seem to look really cool in cold temperatures when ice forms in them.  Probably not a great thing for the fountain itself, but as long as the water keeps flowing at least it shouldn’t be able to freeze up in the pipes.

The combination of ice and snow seems to form some unusual patterns on the surface of the ice that forms in the waterways at the park. 

After spending some time wandering around a bit and stopping by the grocery store to grab a few things (shockingly, nobody had cleared out the canned goods aisle, although the store did seem pretty busy,) I headed back home, taking a different path this time.   By this time, the sidewalks seemed to be getting even slushier than they were on the way out, making for a somewhat tricky (but not especially dangerous) walk up the hill.

Admittedly, I haven’t been much of a fan of the snow over the years (at least not since I left high school,) but I do have to say that I don’t mind it quite as much these days, at least as long as I don’t have to try to drive in it.  If nothing else, it gives me some actual Winter weather to get away from when I head off to somewhere nice and sunny next week…  Oh, did I mention I was headed off to somewhere nice and sunny next week?  Although with the way most Winters turn out around here, I could probably get away with “Less Dreary” and still do pretty well.  Oh well, at least we don’t get these types of snowstorms too often.  Then again, I suppose if that happened we might even learn how to deal with them eventually.

There’s no getting away from it now, at least not unless you’ve got travel plans already and happen to be able to get to the airport sometime in, oh, about the next 20 minutes or so.  That’s right, there’s snow on the way, and plenty of it (or a moderate quantity of it depending on where exactly you happen to be, but that’s just nitpicking anyway.)  A Winter Wonderland of Doom awaits all who dare to venture out into the elements.  While it’s true that reasonable precautions and preparation now can save you from serious trouble later, who’s got time for that?   Sure, the warnings have been out there for days now, but why bother being prudent and taking reasonable precautions when you can just put everything off to the last minute?  Besides, under certain circumstances, I hear that panicking can be quite rewarding.

That’s not to say that you should just go out and run around in circles screaming with your hands up in the air.  Sure, it’s a pretty standard method of panicking, but ultimately it doesn’t really accomplish much, and it mostly just makes you look silly.  You see, in order to panic properly, you need to combine the usual irrational with rash decisions and counterproductive overreactions.  There’s a fine art to proper weather-related panic, and with these handy tips, you can be panicking like a pro in no time.

• Start by cleaning out a supermarket or two.  Any experienced worrywart knows that the first thing you do when it looks like there might be snow on the way is to head for the nearest supermarket and go clean out the canned goods aisle, but anyone can do that.  In order to do it right, you can’t just go in with a shopping list like you’re making your weekly grocery run, you’ve got to rush in at the first sign of peril and fill a cart up with the first thing you see on the shelves.  Sure, that tends to mean you’re going to end up with a year’s supply of canned garbanzo beans and 12 boxes of Corrugated Fiber Crunchies (The world’s first 100% recycled breakfast cereal!) which doesn’t sound like much fun, especially when compared with the sumptuous looking boxes of Macaroni and Cheese  right next to it on the shelf, but remember, this is a crisis, and you’re not panicking properly unless you treat it like it’s a crisis.  Besides, you can always go download a few thousand recipes for canned garbanzo beans off the Internet, right?  Oh, and be sure to keep some of the stuff in the car, you never know when you might find yourself needing to live in there for a while…
• Don’t forget the essentials.  Even after you’ve cleaned out the nearest canned goods aisle, you’re going to need some other stuff to survive.  For example, you might want to consider having some firewood around, just in case.  Sure, you may happen to live in an apartment with no fireplace, but if you’re going to make it through this crisis you can’t let little details like that (or other insignificant trivialities like the terms of your apartment lease) deter you.  After all, the last thing you want to find yourself having to do is to burn up your supply of Corrugated Fiber Crunchies to stay warm, right?  (Then again, after you actually try the things, you might find yourself looking for a convenient excuse to do so…)  Oh, and according to some very reliable sources I’ve found on the Internet, just hours before a potentially threatening snowstorm is supposed to be a great time to go out and buy yourself a team of sled dogs.  If you buy them from the right place, I hear they’ll even throw in a handy instructional DVD, so all you need to do is get the dogs to watch it so they know what to do, and you’ll be ready for anything.
• Batten Down the Hatches.  Obviously the best way to keep yourself out of trouble is to stay away from it in the first place, and there’s no place to do that than in the comfort of your own home.  Sure it might be a little crowded in there now that you’ve filled the place with canned garbanzo beans, firewood and quite possibly even a pack of soon to be dangerously bored and undertrained sled dogs, but at least this way you won’t have to be out in the snow.  If you want to be extra careful you might even board up the windows and shove a dresser or two in front of the door.  Sure, you won’t be able to tell that is’s snowing outside, but isn’t that whatFacebook and Twitter are for?
• Go out for a nice drive.  Over the years, the denizens of the Pacific Northwest have become famous worldwide for their Winter driving prowess, and Northwest drivers in the snow have been the subject of many popular viral videos.  Sure, common sense tells you that you don’t want to go out driving in the snow if you don’t really have to, but why pass up what may be your only chance at Internet-wide fortune and fame?  (Well OK, maybe not the fortune part, unless you count your car insurance bills afterward.)  Sure, you may find yourself trying unsuccessfully to climb a 45-degree slope in an old beater Honda to get back to your house, sliding back to the bottom and hitting 2 or 3 Bimmers on the way back down, but remember, anything that is worth having is going to be difficult, and driving home in the middle of a snowstorm is no exception.  Then again, if it all gets to be too much for you to handle, you can always just ditch the car, walk home and go retreive it after the Spring thaw.  Sure, some people might have some issues with this (especially if you happen to do it right in the middle of the freeway) but when we’re in the middle of a weather-related crisis sometimes we must all make sacrifices. 
• When all else fails… Run away.  I hear Florida is lovely (or at least has a lot less crummy weather) around this time of year.  Granted, that leaves the problem of finding flights that don’t cost a small fortune and haven’t been delayed to next Thursday due to the weather, and then getting to the airport when there’s an inch of ice on the roads (as well as potentially a car you recently abandoned sitting in the middle of the freeway,) but that’s just a minor detail.  Maybe this would be a good time to try out those sled dogs, assuming you remembered to buy a dogsled to go along with them.  Um… you DID remember to buy a dogsled, right?

Anyway, with these tips, you’ll be well on your way to becoming a full-fledged Seattle snow panicker.  Now stay safe out there, and if you’d be so kind, try to leave some pasta on the shelf at the supermarket, I haven’t made it over there yet…

Image credit: Flickr user Bill Kramme, Creative Commons

As I’ve talked about on a number of occasions here, one of the nice things about living where I do is the commute to work, or lack thereof.  I don’t have a commute so much as I have a ten minute walk between my apartment and the office.  In theory, this means that I’m not spending any money on commuting expenses (especially since I am no longer making a monthly car payment as of a few months ago,) but I’m pretty sure any money being saved by not driving to work and back is being swallowed up pretty well in the additional living expenses that come with life in Downtown Bellevue compared to what they would be living in a place a bit further out in the suburbs.  Even if I’m leaving the car parked at home all day, I’ve still got to pay the going rate for Downtown parking at home, which tends not to be particularly cheap.  So when it all boils down I’m probably not saving much money (if any at all) by living here and walking to work, but I suppose I’m at least getting a little bit of exercise in the process, right?

Although I have long since cast off any notions of being able to make a living off my Blog (or even much money in the first place, for that matter,) I still think it will be an interesting challenge to try to reverse the decline in site traffic.  I suppose I could do a lot of this by just posting more often (I’ve been trying to maintain the standard of at least one post per week and generally trying to keep that post in the 1,000 word range, although I think I’ve been getting a little bit lazy on that one lately,) but there’s also something to be said for writing more of the types of posts that generate a fair bit of search traffic. 

Anyway, as usual, I would like to thank those of you who have been reading this Blog, and hope you’ll keep reading.

• Total Posts(all time, including this one):  534
• Total Posts (2011): 62
• Total Comments (all time):  850
• Total  Page Views (all time):  212,096
• Total Page Views in 2011: 42, 742
• Total Page Views in 2010:  52,228
• Total Page Views in 2009:  60, 939
• Total Page Views in 2008: 50, 219
• Average Visitors Per Day (2011):  121

Top posts (2011):

Top Posts (All Time):

Second-to-last sunset of 2011.

Well, it’s just about time to put 2011 in the books and move onto 2012.  As tends to be the case with most of them, it’s certainly been an interesting year, and with the way things are going right now, I suspect that 2012 should prove equally interesting, albeit in completely different ways.  Then again, you can never truly tell what the future holds for you until you actually get around to living in it, so there’s really only one way to find out.  In the meantime, here’s a few random thoughts and loose ends to finish out 2011.

• Two days before Christmas, our family got a somewhat unexpected surprise when my sister Jacki had her third son and my fifth nephew several weeks earlier than her expected due date.  Tyson John Keenan arrived into the world on December 23rd at roughly 10:30am, healthy and weighing 6 pounds 5 ounces.  Nonetheless, even giving birth two days beforehand wasn’t enough to deter my sister from attending our usual family Christmas get-together, where the above photo was taken of Tyson with his cousin Isla, born just about four months ago at the end of August.  With all the kids around these days and most of them being boys, I don’t think there’s such a thing as a quiet family get-together in our family anymore. 
• Incidentally, I just spent a good 20 minutes digging through Facebook profiles to try to remember when Isla was born.  I suppose if I was a good uncle I’d actually remember this stuff…
• As I’ve said in the past, I’ve never been big on the whole concept of New Year’s resolutions.  To me, the whole concept seems rather arbitrary.  Nonetheless, back at the beginning of the year I set a number of goals for things I’d like to do over the course of the then coming year, found in this post.  To be honest, I didn’t really get anywhere with any of these, although 2 of the three goals were things that, now that I go back and look at them, were pretty frivolous in the first place.  Granted, all three of the goals (write a PC game from scratch, build a supergun so I can play my collection of arcade boards, write something significant) are still things that I would like to do at some point, but aside from the writing, they’re pretty much things that I wouldn’t be too disappointed in myself if I ended up never getting them done. 
• Speaking of writing, I think I’d still like to set a goal to do more of that in 2012, but I think I need to take a different approach to it.  For a number of years, I’ve had an idea or two for a novel in my head, but for some reason have never been able to develop it well enough to get much out of it.  I suspect that’s one of those things where I’m going to have to start small and work my way up to it.  Then again, sometimes these half-baked ideas may still be useful, but probably not at the scope I had originally envisioned.  Because of this, I would like to set a goal for myself to write a short story every month and post it here.  I have written a few of these here and there and posted them on the Blog (the most recent example being this one, written back in July)  but I’d like to do more of this.  Watch for more of these over the course of the next year.
• In addition to this, I would really like to spend some more time writing about software testing (which is what I do for a living,) most likely in the form of a series of posts discussing some of the basics of testing and explaining how the process works.  Hopefully it’s the type of thing some people out there might find useful.
• After months of putting up with the crummy office chair that I’ve been doing most of my Blogging from for the past several years, I finally got around to replacing it earlier this week.  I have actually been looking at new chairs for quite a while now, but quite frankly, I think for most people, the “perfect” office chair simply doesn’t exist, or at least it ends up being too expensive to bother with.  Even though I could probably afford one of the really nice ones like the dot-com bubble leftover I’ve got at my desk at work (a Herman Miller Mirra) it still seems like a lot of money to spend, even taking into account how much I would be using the thing.  In the end, I went with something that’s a little bit nicer than the gradually self-destructing Ikea chair I had before, but still tried not to spend a ton of money on it.  Chances are I’m just going to be replacing the thing in three years anyway, right?
• Music stuck in my head recently:  Between the Humble Indie Bundles and the holiday sales over on Steam, lately I’ve been picking up a number of indie games and playing them on my PC.  One of my favorites this year has been Jamestown, a well-made 2D shoot-em-up based on a war between Britain and Spain in 15th century… on Mars (um, yeah… don’t expect much in the way of historical accuracy.)  Admittedly, 2D shooters are one of the few niche genres I tend to enjoy, but the orchestral soundtrack to this game is the part that stands out to me the most.  Perhaps the most notable song in the game is this, the Lost Temple of Croatoa Suite, the first part of which accompanies the game’s final level.  The rest of the soundtrack can be found here.

• Somehow, I suspect that when I’m writing another one of these posts at the end of 2012, I’m going to find that there is quite a bit in my life that has changed significantly from where I am right now.  Of course, I can never really tell what the future is going to hold, but I do tend to think that things are (mostly) headed in the right direction. 
• As usual, I should be putting up my annual statistical Overview post sometime tomorrow.  Overall, traffic is down a fair bit from last year, but still pretty reasonable.
• Dear WordPress Spell Checker:  No, I did not misspell “from”, thank you very much for flagging it though.  Thanks, Brian.

Have a happy and safe New Year, and be sure to watch for more cool (or boring, depending on how motivated I’m feeling at the time) stuff here over the course of 2012.

Well, you waited until the last minute to do your Christmas shopping again, didn’t you?  Most people would learn their lesson on that one after the first five or six times they ruined Christmas with their novelty shaped waffle irons and dubiously colored sweaters, but year after year, some people continue to convince themselves that if they do their Christmas shopping in a blind panic at 2pm on Christmas Eve enough times, eventually it’ll all work out.  Here’s a hint for you:  It doesn’t.  As we’ve all learned from sad and repeated experience, waiting for the last minute generally results in a lot of sitting around in traffic just trying to get to the stores in the first place (and over the past couple of weeks I’ve witnessed quite a few fun little traffic jams pointed in the direction of Bellevue Square, which makes me really glad I don’t have to sit around in any of them,) lots of waiting for parking spots when you get there, and lots of wading through crowds of people who just happened to make the same mistakes.  In short, you really should have done all this weeks ago.

But in spite of your predicament, I’m here to help…  Sort of.  Once again, it’s time for the sort-of-annual Sledgehammer Last-Minute Christmas gift guide, chock full of gift-giving ideas that you should most likely consider not having if you can possibly help it.  As usual, you’re responsible for whatever consequences arise  if for some reason you happen to actually give any of the items on this list as a gift. If you try to blame me I’ll just deny everything.  You’ve been properly warned.  That said, you’ll find the complete list after the jump. 

Previous Gift Guides and Other Holiday Posts:

• 2010 :  Coal is Overrated:  The 2010 Sledgehammer Last-Minute Christmas Gift Guide
• 2009:  Deck the Halls With Something Or Other – A Roundup of Questionable Holiday Decorations 
• 2008:  Was too busy hanging out either at Disney World or buried under eighteen inches of snow to do much Holiday stuff, but I did put together this post on the Disney version of Christmas that some people may find vaguely interesting.
• 2007:  The First (And Quite Possibly Last) Ever Sledgehammer Last-Minute Christmas Gift Guide

If for some reason you haven’t done any of your Holiday decorating by now, you’re going to have a hard time catching up.  Maybe if you had been paying attention you could have caught some of the good stuff back during the 3 or 4 days back in September it was around in the stores.  Then again, if you’re lucky you might still be able to find a tree or two on the shelves that isn’t made entirely out of purple tinsel, and there might even be an indoor/outdoor reindeer or two to be found.  I suppose I’ve always been under the impression that reindeer were pretty much supposed to be an exclusively outdoor thing, but admittedly I haven’t exactly been keeping up with the latest trends in decorating with antler-bearing mammals, so I could be wrong on that one.

Of course, you can’t decorate for Christmas without a snowglobe or two.  For the most part, snowglobes tend to be relatively small, but for those people who want to buy in bulk, your local warehouse club might just carry one of these giant economy sized snow globes.  The photo doesn’t exactly do this thing justice, it’s easily the biggest snowglobe I’ve ever seen that wasn’t actually one of those giant inflatable novelty snowglobes, and it comes permanently affixed to a pedestal base, which doesn’t exactly lend itself to people shaking it to make the snow fall inside (there’s some sort of pump inside that’s supposed to be used instead, but most people aren’t ever going to figure that out just by looking at it.)  You’ll definitely want to keep this one out of the reach of children, and should probably just keep it away from most of the adults too.

Then again, perhaps you’re looking for something just a bit more generic.  For that, we’ve got Bear in Tree Trunk, which consists of a bear (or a semi-reasonable facsimile thereof) in a tree trunk, and nothing else.  The name says it all, so they don’t even bother trying to describe it.  If you’re looking for a good simple no-nonsense bear in a tree trunk, make it this one.

Once you’ve got your decorations (such as they are) sorted out, it’s time to set the mood.  And what better way to do that than with a nice cozy Blu-Ray disc of a camera pointed at a fireplace?  Sure, the whole concept of making videos of fireplaces and selling them is nothing new, but just think, for the first time ever you can watch someone else’s fireplace in stunning 1080p high definition!  When the neighbors down the block have their Christmas party and they’re just simply streaming their fireplace videos off of Netflix, it just won’t feel the same.  This Cozy Cracklin’ Fireplace Blu-Ray disc will let you bask in the pre-recorded yet incredibly lifelike glow of a  nice cozy fireplace whenever you want!  (Please note: Warmth sold separately.)

And if you need to get into the Christmas spirit, why not put on one of these vaguely timeless Christmas classics?  Sure, everyone usually goes for the more popular Christmas specials, but why pass up the opportunity to recall timeless memories of a Flash-animated remake of an old Sixties cartoon that lasted all of two seasons, A Straight-to-video CG-animated cash-in on a vaguely successful feature film, and few scattered episodes of a couple of shows with small cult followings, you have to jump on that opportunity.

Then again, most people are going to prefer to stick to the classics that are actually, you know, classic.  That doesn’t mean you can’t mess that one up too.  From the murky depths of the Wal-Mart shovelware bin comes these Wii “Adaptations” of two of the more popular Christmas specials, providing none of the adventure and excitement of the originals, for a sizeable fraction of the cost of the actual DVDs.  I couldn’t find much info on the Santa Claus one, but the Rudolph game earned a particularly dismal 1.5 rating on a scale of 1 to 10 from IGN.

Speaking of Wii, there are few things that can compare to plastic video game accessories for sheer uselessness when it comes to gift giving.  After seeing years of pointless Wiimote attachments and cheap plastic iThingies coming down the pipe I had assumed that this particular vein of crud had been pretty well played out, but this faux gold-plated Wiimote accessory kit just puts the whole thing completely over the edge.  Fortunately (or otherwise,) the Wii’s successor should be coming out sometime next year, giving the accessory makers plenty of time to come up with an entirely new batch of useless plastic.  I’d say I’m looking forward to it, but I’m pretty sure I’d be lying.

On the other hand, there are a few games out there this Christmas season that don’t completely suck (in particular, feel free to blame Skyrim for the relative dearth of updates on the Blog this month,) but one trend I’ve noticed becoming increasingly pervasive over the past couple of years is the proliferation of humongous ”cram it full of crud” collector’s editions of big game releases.  It used to be that a collector’s edition of a game would cost an extra $10-20 and include an extra disc or two with things like art books and soundtracks, and possibly some added in-game content.  Nowadays, it seems that especially for games that are expected to be big sellers, they have to put out some sort of “ultimate” edition, and it invariably has to include a statue of some sort.  Aside from the fact that the vast majority of semi-responsible adults who might fall into the target audience for these types of games  tend to have spouses that disapprove of displaying statues of video game characters on the coffee table, there’s also the fact that these things are huge.  When you start having to look at a video game and deciding whether or not you have room for it in your apartment, chances are that something’s gone awry here.

Those of you who have spent the last couple of years not living under a rock are most likely well acquainted with Angry Birds by now.  What started as a fun little timewaster on the iPhone and iPad somehow turned into an unexpected runaway success, with sales well into the tens of millions across a number of different platforms and devices.  Naturally, the appropriate response to this unplanned success is to merchandise the living daylights out of the stuff, and before you know it you’ve got whole entire shelves full of Angry Birds merchandise in just about every store you can think of.  When you think about it, the whole thing seems to be kind of like the Beanie Baby craze that I had absolutely nothing to do with back in the day, and certainly didn’t make me go overboard and spend way too much money on what ended up being huge piles of cute-yet-monetarily-worthless beanbags back in the day.  Nope, definitely didn’t get mixed up in that one.

You start to get the sense that the whole thing is getting a tad overexposed when you start seeing huge shelves full of the merchandise in stores that normally wouldn’t even be selling plush toys in the first place, but it’s when you start seeing stuff like this $99 Angry Birds speaker dock that you begin to get the sneaking suspicion that the whole thing is headed at an ever-increasing rate of speed toward the mother of all shark-jumpings.  And then you start to worry that when the bottom drops out, it’s going to end up taking half the economy of Finland down the tubes with it, which is going to make a big mess out of pretty much everything.  I can hardly wait to see the headlines in the Wall Street Journal about the Angry Birds Bailout.  Just remind me to cash out my 401K before that happens, OK?

Elsewhere in the toy department, we’ve got Pillow Pals, another one of these things that seems to be all over the place in spite of the suspicious lack of an unaccountably popular mobile app to overexpose them to an unsuspecting public.  In a nutshell, they’re stuffed animals that, through the strategic application of a couple of Velcro strips, turn into pillows (and vice versa.)  Apparently they’ve diversified beyond animals into automobiles, as this Lightning McQueen Pillow Pal indicates.  A Thomas the Tank Engine Pillow Pal was also found nearby with six “wheels,” which looks just plain odd among the various generic and not-so-generic animals found elsewhere on the shelves.

If your kids happen to be anything like the gaggle of young boys found at a typical Lutz family gathering these days, there’s a good chance that they’re going to end up singing stuff at some point, and quite possibly singing it rather loudly and rather off-key.  If you happen to have this problem in your house, why not Auto-tune ‘em?  Sure they’ll still be loud and occasionally obnoxious, but at least this way they’ll be on key (sort of.) 

If games happen to be on the menu for Christmas Day, you can always rely on all the old standbys like Monopoly, Scrabble, Twister and Clue to be reliably entertaining and/or argument inducing, but there’s one thing that seems to be lacking with these classic games:  edibility.  Thankfully, that problem’s now been solved by creating versions of the games with chocolate pieces.  Well actually it’s a bit less complicated than that, mostly these seem to be boxes of chocolate with a few rules vaguely resembling the represented games thrown in.  Replay value is, predictably, rather low, as the rules call for consumption of the pieces in the course of play.  In real-world situations, I’d expect that most games will be called on account of devouring.

Next, we move on to the ever-present Holiday standbys of the boxed gift items, always a reliable source of relatively inexpensive items of dubious quality.  If you happen to have a golfer on your Christmas list this year, you’d think that they would be interested in something that might be used in the course of playing golf, but what they really want is this golfer’s Rubic (No trademarks were harmed in the production of this item) cube that shows how much they enjoy golf.  Or at least it would if not for the fact that it’s going to end up scrambled five minutes after it comes out of the box, most likely never to return to original form.

Next, we have this matching set of four finger lights, perfect for those times when your parents won’t let you throw a lightswitch rave in the living room.

And if you happen to have someone on your list who would never be caught dead without an emergency cold one on their person, there’s this handy beverage holster, which touts its ability to ensure that you’re never caught drinkless.  Granted, it’s not exactly the type of thing you’d want to use in a Concealed Carry situation, but I think you’re supposed to have some sort of a special permit for those situations anyway.

Aside from a few overmonied socialite types with a dozen servants apiece, pretty much everyone on your list is going to eventually have need for a few basic tools to do stuff around the house.  Sure, it’s pretty easy to find a basic toolkit that’ll cover 90% of the basic household jobs , but where is a self-conscious fashionista supposed to find a hammer that matches her outfit?  Right here.  Just make sure nobody sees you using this thing after Labor Day, OK?  Your life would be SO over.

Oh, and if you don’t want to spend the big bucks ($30 and up) for that T-Pain microphone up above, here’s a cheaper alternative.  In fact, you should get one for each of the kids.  After all, the gift of Migraines is really what the holidays are all about, right?

Of course, sometimes there’s that special someone in your life, and you may find yourself in a situation where you need to spend more than $10 and ten minutes worth of thought on a gift, so we need to consider a few higher-end alternatives.  If you’ve got a nerd on the list, this Lego Star Wars Super Star Destroyer would fill the bill quite nicely, assuming you can handle the $400 price tag and are gifting it to someone who can manage to assemble all 3,152 pieces without getting too distracted or losing any of them.

Then again, if that special someone just happens to be obnoxiously rich (or wants to appear to be obnoxiously rich,) there’s these Prada flip-flops, practically a steal at $129 for a pair (which, if I recall correctly, is marked down from an original price of $200.)  Which is actually pretty cheap…  for Prada anyway. 

Then again, if someone wants to appear obnoxiously wealthy (or just plain obnoxious, for that matter) there’s always the approach of just taking something and covering it in random glittering things, kind of like what was done to these throw pillows.  Practically a steal at $80 a pop, discounted to $40 at the time I took this, but most manufacturers’ suggested retail prices tend to be all but fictitious anyway, so I’m guessing the “sale” price is much closer to reality.  Not recommended for anyone easily distracted by- Ooh, shiny!

On the other hand, if your significant other is getting to be significant enough, there’s a good chance she’s going to start wanting some jewelry, and that’s going to start getting expensive in a hurry.  I’m assuming they just accidentally forgot to include the decimal point in that one, right?  I sure hope so, otherwise next Christmas could get just a tad expensive…

And finally, just in case you can’t come up with anything else, whatever you do, make sure you skip this one.  The fact that a “gift” set just happens to contain deodorant should send up pretty much every single warning flag in the book, but just think for a second of what kind of message you’re sending to the recipient of this one.  Quite frankly, I think you’d get yourself in less trouble buying a gift out of the vacuum cleaner aisle.

Anyways, once again I would like to wish all of my readers a Merry Christmas and (assuming you manage to survive your last-minute shopping misadventures) a Happy New Year, and remind you to always save the receipt.

Early last week, I found myself in one of the occasional vaguely scrambled mental states I manage to get into every once in a while, which resulted in one of my (very) occasional late-night trips to Denny’s to sort things out. As I’ve discussed previously, I can’t explain just why it is that I only ever seem to end up at Denny’s when my brain isn’t quite firing on all of its proverbial cylinders, but there’s a certain quiet and largely distraction-free solitude to a nearly deserted restaurant late at night that seems to be conducive to sorting out these types of mental states. Granted, this doesn’t really happen all that often, but apparently it happens often enough that I’m starting to recognize some of the people who frequent the place at that time of night, including some guy in one of the booths behind the counter who seems to be often engaged in phone conversations that are, even by my standards, incredibly nerdy. There’s also several of the waiters and waitresses who I’ve begun to recognize from multiple late-night visits. This seems to be a remnant of the culture that developed over the years (but has now largely vanished around here, although some holdouts still remain, largely unchanged) within the various greasy spoon diners, but it’s a culture that I doubt I could embrace, although I certainly don’t put myself above making the occasional visit.

As would be expected of most places around this time of year, the place was decorated for the Holidays, and the speaker system was quietly playing a variety of assorted Christmas tunes, mostly of the traditional variety. It’s one of those things that most of the time you’d hear in the background in some store or at some party and not give more than a passing thought to (although I’m sure just about anyone would notice the stuff if someone was playing it in the middle of April or something like that, but that’s beside the point.) And in my case, most of the time that’s pretty much how it works. In this case, perhaps it was the fact that I was sitting quietly at the counter waiting for an order of chicken strips, or perhaps I was just trying to find something for my brain to latch onto besides its own static, but for some reason I started actually listening to the stuff. And when I did this, pretty quickly the stuff all started sounding incredibly cheesy.

Coincidentally, it was just about this time that one of the nearby waitresses (one who definitely fits the diner waitress archetype, who you could easily picture calling for the cook to flop two over easy with a couple of zeppelins and a moo juice at some place out on the side of Highway 23) was clearing off a table behind me, and made an offhand comment to nobody in particular that, to paraphrase a bit, she’d have to shoot herself in the head if she had to listen to this stuff for another month. This resulted in a brief conversation on the subject in which I largely agreed with the assertion (minus the shooting in the head part of course) and noted that if I had to listen to the same twenty syrupy Holiday songs on continuous loop for a month, I’d probably have to consider a similar course of action. Granted, the fact that I don’t have to listen to the same twenty songs on a continuous loop for a month does tend to mean that I probably have a bit more tolerance than that, but when you think about it, we’re long overdue for some new “classic” Christmas songs.

I mean this with no offense intended to the Bing Crosbys and Burl Ives of the world (or at least their estates and the presumably generous royalty checks they continue to get around this time each year,) but there’s only so many times you can hear Baby, It’s Cold Outside, Happy Holidays or any of the other vaguely generic holiday songs that seem to inhabit many a tinny overhead speaker in the grocery store around this time of the year before the whole thing just starts sounding incredibly cheesy. I mean, exactly when was it decided that the theme to the Charlie Brown cartoons counts as Christmas music? Sure, there’s the classic Charlie Brown Christmas special that shows up around this time of year, but there’s at least another 50 Charlie Brown TV specials that have been produced over the years (only a handful of which are Christmas-related,) making the connection tenuous at best. For that matter, you can count most of the stuff from the various “classic” Christmas specials to be thoroughly overplayed with the other Holiday stuff. Frosty the Snowman may be a perfectly fine song when you’re playing it in a Rankin-Bass special, but when you take that same song and insert into the background of a department store selling rather expensive clothing, it tends to feel a little bit out-of-place.

Again, I don’t have anything against the playing of Christmas or other Holiday music around this time of year (in fact, there’s quite a bit of it that I like, although most of that tends to be the more overtly religious stuff that might tend to be just a bit too politically incorrect for most public places), but I’m thinking it’s about time we as a society start seriously thinking about making some new “classic” Christmas music. It’s not like we need to make a big production out of it or anything, just come up with a few interchangeable baritones to do the lead vocals, put together a breathy chorus or two for backing vocals, add in a decent sized jazz band to fill in the instrumentals, and you’ve pretty much got all the ingredients. Throw together some bouncy lyrics about snowflakes, sledding, cozy fires, presents and falling in love (possibly even all at once,) and before you know it you’ll have some stuff that’ll find a place on grocery store PA systems and easy-listening radio stations for at least a good 50 years. Sure, there’s still plenty of established performers and bands out there cranking out a Holiday album or two on the side when they happen to need an extra swimming pool for Christmas, but most of that stuff seems to be surprisingly forgettable, and you hardly hear any of the “new” stuff that’s more than a year or two old. I suspect most of it will probably be finding its way to the Dustbin of Christmas Past long before we stop hearing Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer being played unironically in public places.

Sure, even if we do manage to replace all the old and overplayed stuff with completely new and inevitably soon-to-be overplayed stuff, eventually we’ll be right back to the original problem of annoying the heck out of waitresses in all-night diners. At least by the time that happens, it’ll all be someone else’s problem to deal with, right?

In my extended family, there’s been a longstanding tradition that we have an ornament exchange which takes place at Thanksgiving each year.  Although the ornaments that come up in the exchange each year range from the mundane to the sublime,  there are a lot of crafty people in the family, which means that store-bought ornaments tend to get a bit outclassed.  Over the years, I’ve gone mostly with the store-bought stuff anyway, with a couple of ill-advised attempts at handmade ornaments thrown in for good measure as well.  I actually kind of enjoy making ornaments myself, although to be honest, when I try to make stuff by hand, usually the results don’t quite add up to what I originally had in mind.  To give you some idea of this, I tend to consider a craft project to be successful if nothing got set on fire or maimed during the process.

It is because of this tendency that last year, I decided to take a different approach to the problem.  As outlined in the post that I wrote about last year’s ornaments, I found a place over on Capitol Hill in Seattle called Metrix Create:Space that has all sorts of cool toys like 3D printers and laser cutters.  Although I’m pretty sure the 3D printers are a bit out of my league for the time being (at least until I manage to get some idea what the heck I’m doing when it comes to 3D modeling) I found that through a combination of open source tools and following instructions found in several FAQs posted on the Internet, creating a design that would work with the laser cutter proved to be a lot less daunting task than it might sound.  The ornaments which resulted from this project turned out very nice, and were very well received.  The only real problem I had with these ornaments was the fact that they ended up being far more expensive than I had originally planned on.  In fact, I think I spent about twice as much on the project as I had originally budgeted, and given the costs of laser cutting, I had planned on quite a bit.

As a result of this, although the tools for this year’s ornaments were pretty much the same as last years, the approach taken to the project was quite different, as was the end result.  After the jump, you’ll find a description of the process used to create my ornaments for this year’s family Thanksgiving ornament exchange.

With last year’s ornaments being so well received, this year’s ornaments were going to have a tough act to follow, but at the same time  I also needed to put a priority on keeping the costs down as well.  The first step in this would be to switch from acrylic to wood, which not only costs less than the plastic does in material costs, but also cuts more quickly on the laser and doesn’t come with the “stink” surcharge that the shop has for acrylic laser cutting (can’t say I blame them on that one.)  At the same time, instead of cutting out 2 or 3 big complex parts, I decided a better approach would be to use a number of less intricate parts that could be cut more quickly, and use less time on the laser.  In particular, I found this design for an Old School Space Rocket which had been posted by a member of Thingiverse, a site which people use to share pieces they have designed to use with laser cutters, 3D printers, CNC routers and other such tools.  If you’ve ever had one of those wooden dinosaur skeleton puzzles as a kid (or still have one, they still seem to be pretty common) the principle is much the same.  You have a number of different pieces to the puzzle (in this case, the rocket) which press fit together in a certain order to make the desired structure, without the need for any glue or fasteners.  In a way, it’s a (relatively simple) puzzle as much as it is a decorative piece, and aside from the fact that the thing is 15 inches tall (or 3o inches tall if you’d prefer the larger version) it looked like a good candidate to turn into an ornament.

Of course, even with the precision afforded by a laser cutter, scaling something that complex and with that many pieces down to Christmas ornament size was going to be impractical, so the first order of business would be to significantly simplify the design.  Digging up some ancient knowledge acquired from a basic drafting class that I took in high school (for the most part this was still a pencil-and-paper affair, AutoCAD was a different class I never got a chance to take),  I sketched up the stuff you see above. Obviously this wasn’t intended to be done with any sort of precision, mostly I was doing this as an exercise to determine the proportions, and even then, I didn’t have a ruler available when I was doing this, so I’m sure it’s no more than an educated guess really.

With a vague idea of what I wanted this to look like, the next step was to fire up Inkscape to start putting things together.  Fortunately, Inkscape is well-suited to creating the shapes that are required for the center rings.  I made heavy use of the snap-to-grid feature (on my initial prototype, I had my gridlines spaced 1/16″ apart, the smaller gridlines don’t show at this scale) to make sure the sizes and positions were correct.  The notches that the pieces would be inserted into were added by placing them in the proper spot at the top of the circle and using Inkscape’s difference tool to “subtract” them from the shape, then rotating 120 degrees (or 60 degrees for the 6-notch pieces) and repeating the process.  I also used the grid to set the positions of  the notches on the side pieces in order to ensure that this would come together properly, then used the curve tool to build the shape around them, differencing the notches out of the finished shape.   At this time, I was working in inches, which ultimately ended up causing some problems as the plywood pieces I was working with were measured in millimeters (3mm, where 1/8″ is closer to 3.125mm.)  I also created rings in quite a few different sizes so I could play around with the proportions of the final piece a bit. 

After creating some of my initial designs, I decided I might save myself a few bucks on prototyping by cutting out pieces in Foamcore.  A  few minutes of messing around with an X-Acto knife and mostly making a mess of things put that notion to rest.  At least I didn’t spend a fortune on a cutting board…

After figuring out all the specifics, the next step was to put together a “kit” that could be run on the laser cutter to make a prototype.  While it would be easy to just throw the pieces together, in this case I would also need to come up with a layout that would allow the maximum number of pieces to be made off of a 12×18″ sheet of birch plywood, so an effort was made to get all the pieces down into the smallest possible footprint.

With layout in hand, the next step was to make a trip over to Metrix to cut out a copy of the layout above and try it out.  After cutting, it became quickly apparent that there were a number of problems with this version.  Aside from the fact that the top of the rocket doesn’t work too well in this version (something I had intended to fix later,) the proportions just don’t work out well for a Christmas ornament on this version.  But an even bigger problem was the fact that although I could get the pieces together without too much trouble, they just simply didn’t want to stay together, a result of the notches being too wide.  This was, as noted above, caused by using inches on a task that was really much more suited to metric units.  There were also some problems with the cutter not properly cutting out a couple of the pieces which ultimately required a couple of the fins to need to be recut, but that had nothing to do with the design.  On top of all that, this particular version required just a bit over four minutes of laser time to cut out, which was going to end up being more than I wanted.  I will probably go back and rework this version somewhere along the line, but for the time being it was back to the drawing board.  This particular photo makes this look much shorter than it actually is, in reality the rings are spaced about an inch apart from each other.  In this particular design, I figured I should be able to get roughly enough pieces for eight rockets off of a 12×18″ sheet of plywood.

Starting again from basically square one, I decided that the next (and ultimately final) version of this would be a fair bit smaller.  Once again, I started out by making the rings in a number of different sizes, and using those to determine proportion again, and also to determine how close to each other I could get the notches without pieces interfering with each other.  Another big change I made on this version was to use an asymmetrical layout of ring sizes to improve the proportions.  I also altered the shape of the fins somewhat, to make it a bit easier for the finished product to stand upright.  Perhaps most importantly, I used smaller notches in this version (2.9 millimeters, as opposed to the 3.125 mm in the first version) so the pieces would fit together more tightly.  In the end, I think they ended up being a little too tight on this one, but at least this version is a lot less likely to fall apart when assembled.  I could probably mess around with that a bit more too, but in the end, I don’t think it would make much difference.

Here are the parts for the second version.  As you can see, they take up a lot less space than the first version.

With the second prototype ready to cut, I took another trip out to Metrix.  After a slight mix-up that resulted in an accidental second copy of the first version being made, the parts for the second version were cut out and assembled for the first time.  the result can be seen above.  Aside from being much better proportioned, a much better size for an ornament and actually staying together, this version also significantly reduced the cutting time needed from the version 1, down from over four minutes to just under three.  given the high price of laser cutting time, this is pretty significant.

For comparison purposes, here is version 2 shown next to the significantly larger version 1. 

Just for curiosity’s sake, I did also have one of these cut out in acrylic, but quickly abandoned this idea after finding out that the notches were incorrectly sized when cut out in plastic (way too loose) and had one of the side pieces break during my attempt to assemble it.  Between this and the inadvertent second copy of version 1, I had a decent pile of extra pieces sitting around when everything was said and done.

Finally happy (mostly) with the design, the next step was to prepare for production.  From this point, no changes were made besides the addition of a place for the ornament hook to be attached, as you can see above.  In some initial messing around with the design before adding the ornament hook to it, I found that I could easily get the parts for 12 complete kits off a sheet of plywood using the parts layout for a single kit above.  When I split up the individual parts to their own separate sections (as seen here) I was easily able to get the parts for 14 kits (plus some spares) on a sheet.  With the ornament hangers added, it became a bit trickier, but ultimately I was able to get 14 kits off a single sheet.  I think I’d be hard-pressed to get much more than that though.

With the final design sorted out, the next step was production. This photo was taken toward the end of the cutting process, which ended up being a little over 42 minutes total (which was charged at the production rate which is cheaper than the prototype rate, but includes an initial setup fee.)  Fortunately, the initial problems with the laser not cutting pieces properly was resolved with this batch, and every single piece was cut out on the first try with no issue.

Here’s what some of the pieces looked like after cutting while they were being collected from the machine.  The circles at the center of each of the rings just popped right out with no hassle.

And here’s what the sheet of plywood looked like after all the pieces were cut out of it.  It’s actually kind of a cool piece in its own right so I kept it, although I’m not sure exactly what I’m supposed to do with it.  You can see that especially on the pieces with the ornament hangers some of the tolerances were closer than I had expected, but everything worked out pretty well in the end.

Although I was reasonably certain that most people would be able to figure out how to put these together without too much trouble, I figured it would probably be useful to have some sort of instructions included just in case.  As a finishing touch, I adapted the initial drawing of the second version into a quick illustration of all the pieces to show what goes where.  I would have liked to do a 3D model as well, but my brief attempts at using Google Sketchup for the purpose proved largely fruitless as my attempts to import the SVG file with a Sketchup plugin did little more than throw cryptic errors.

Even though I didn’t spend anywhere near as much on this year’s ornaments as I did on last year’s version, I didn’t want to get too fancy with ribbons, bows and bags, so I just opted for simple Ziploc bags (which, if you think about it, is probably more in line with the do-it-yourself feel of the whole project anyway.)  This was the form in which the ornaments were handed out to the rest of the family.

All in all, even though I can think of a few things that I might do to improve on this project the next time I make something like this, I think this turned out pretty well.  I haven’t heard anything back from any of the recipients of the ornaments on any difficulties with assembly or any problems with stuff falling apart, so hopefully that’s a good sign.  Once I get a few things sorted out I intend to put the SVG files for this up on Thingiverse so anyone out there who has access to a laser cutter can make these for themselves (I’ll be sure to add this here once it’s available.)  I’ll probably also go back and revise the larger first version into something that probably still won’t work too well as an ornament, but should still be OK to use for something to stick on the desk, or possibly throw a few pencils in.  In the meantime, now I’ve got to figure out what I’m going to make next year.  Fortunately I’ve got some time to figure this out…

(TODO: Take a new Thanksgiving table picture so I don’t have to keep recycling old ones over and over again.)

Every year around this time Thanksgiving rolls around, and for some odd reason, every year around this time I always seem to mention something here about how Thanksgiving just seemingly snuck up on us out of nowhere.  Naturally this is a rather absurd notion, as anyone who has been paying attention probably would have noticed Halloween popping up on the calendar a few weeks ago, and taken that as a clear sign of impending turkey.  Nonetheless, it is with anticipation that we look at the arrival of Thanksgiving, as it provides one of the few chances we get each year to have the whole entire family together at once.  And as it always does, Thanksgiving also provides an opportunity to look back and take stock of the past year to see where I have been, and what blessings I have received.

For those of you who may not have read one of these posts before, every year at our big family Thanksgiving get-together, we have a tradition where we all go around the table, and each person takes a little bit of time to speak of some of the things that they are thankful for.  For those of you who are familiar with Agile development, the whole thing’s basically like a Scrum meeting, only with a lot more people, and last time I checked people usually don’t bring donuts to Thanksgiving.  When I started writing this Blog over four years ago, I also started doing a “going around the table” Blog post around Thanksgiving time each year as well, with several other members of the family (depending on their varying degrees of motivation to actually maintain their Blogs) making their own posts as well.  The previous Going Around the Table posts can be found here (2008), here (2009) and here (2010).  So without further ado, here are some of the things that I am thankful for as we once again approach Thanksgiving.

For those of you who have been reading this Blog for a while, you are probably aware of some of the various interesting circumstances of the year that preceded Thanksgiving 2010, and the couple of months prior to Thanksgiving in particular.  This year has, thankfully, been a lot less tumultuous for me, and has allowed me a chance to settle down a bit.  In particular, I’ve finally had the opportunity to settle down into a good and reasonably stable job after years of working as a contractor that resulted in the need to frequently be searching for the next job at the end of each contract.  Although this was far from being an ideal situation, I found that I would always be able to find the things that I needed at the times that I needed them, and it is through that period that I came to a firm belief that if I am doing the right things, one way or another things would work out (and quite often I’ve found things to happen in the “Or Another” category.)  Granted, I don’t intend this to be a claim that I am doing the right things all the time (or even most of the time, for that matter) but through these years of wandering from contract to contract, I saw it happen enough times that I can’t believe it to be mere coincidence.

I wouldn’t exactly say that this past year was marked by any sort of profound change from previous years, but in many ways it’s provided a chance to settle down a bit.  For the first time since I worked in my first Tech Support job out of high school (I don’t really like to talk about that one much to be honest) I’ve spent more than a year consecutively in the same job.  Granted, even in that there’s been a bit of turmoil here and there, but all in all, I have to say that I’m grateful for where I am right now.  The job I am in has given me an opportunity to grow in a number of the skills I need to achieve my long-term career goals, I have good managers who I get along with very well, and who trust in me enough to mostly just stay out of the way and let me do what needs to be done, my daily commute is a ten-minute walk to the office, I managed to finally get my car paid off a few months ago, and I have actual vacation time, something I’ve lacked for quite a while.  Sure, it might be nice if my stock options weren’t so far underwater that I don’t think even Jacques Cousteau could find them at this point, but all in all, I’m pretty happy with where I am right now.  I know I can’t expect this to last forever (and in fact, I know I’ll have to take some steps toward making some changes myself in the not-too-distant future as I come to realize that now is the time to seek out my eternal companion,) but I’m grateful to have a bit of stability for the time being. 

I’m also grateful for the fact that I’ve had the opportunity to do some traveling this year, as I know that this is something that not a lot of people get to do.  It’s always good to get the chance to expand one’s horizons, and even though I begin to worry that I might b getting myself a bit stuck in a rut with this whole cruise thing, I’m glad that I’ve had the opportunity to take several of them this year, and to bring my brother who I don’t see much of these days along with me for one of them.  I’m also grateful that I got to take a trip to Disneyland back in September with several friends, which gives an entirely different perspective than I’d get from traveling alone.  I know that for quite a while during my twenties, I had a tendency at times to be a bit of a loner.  Sure, I’d get along with people just fine, I just didn’t place as much importance on the friendship of other people as I really should have (which probably has a lot more to do with how I ended up being still single at age 30 than I’d really like to admit.)  It’s easy to let this become one of those things you don’t really think you need until you finally find friends like that and begin to realize what you’re missing.

All in all, I realize that I have a lot to be grateful for this year, even if I’m not always as good as I should be about expressing that gratitude.  Now, for anyone else in the family who still happens to be blogging (I know of one or two, not so sure about the others), it’s your turn.