Deer on the Run

Back at the parent's house over the weekend for a little graduation celebration. My little bro finally wiped out the college and walked away a degree greater. In that honor, my mom through together a nice open house, complete with sammiches and tri-colored pastas. We had the best time at the party... watching the SPCA and police show up on account of a wild baby fawn.

Apparently, this all goes back about 3 weeks ago when somehow, a baby fawn of maybe 5 or 6 weeks old got stuck in our neighbor's back yard. (We assume it came in while they had the gate open.) The mama deer comes over a few times a day for nursing. The idea was to let it hang out until it was old enough to clear the fence.

Some neighbor was not cool with the fawn, who shares a backyard with a little yip yip dog, co-existing. (Apparently the yipping was alarming to them, and they decided to call the police, who, in turn, called the SPCA). Well, a guy came out to get the deer out, said he couldn't have a possible deer-dog related attack. Then people started running their mouths, and a cruiser with a couple of officers was sent out to investigate. Some harsh words were exchanged during all of this, all while we have an open house with family in town, sitting out back, watching the yahoo events unfold.

Eventually, the fawn got out of the yard it was in, and then somehow came back. At this point, we propped open our fence and I explained to the neighbors that the fawn was totally welcome in our yard: we don't have a dog, the mama deer's already familiar, and well, it's interesting to watch. Later, after the party, the fawn snook in under the fence, and is now hanging out in parent's yard, out by our garden.

Some people have a pet dog or cat, we have a baby deer.

Back In Arms

Whew! It's been busy again around here recently. First and foremost, my fiancee finally made it back to the states this past Tuesday! That was a true feat in and of itself, as we've been waiting and waiting patiently for the government (immigration!) to let that happen. And finally, there ya go it happened.

Of course, all of this not without a hitch. No!

So when the lady stepped foot in America (Detroit), they brought her over a special counter for immigration. As expected. She had brought with her a huge packet of papers received in early April that came in some obnoxiously large envelop, marked "DO NOT OPEN UNTIL REQUESTED BY IMMIGRATION". Fair enough. So, she didn't. Came to find upon opening that she was supposed to be here no later than April.

Say what?

She had only had her immigration interview in Japan in late March / early April. Our understanding was that she had 6 months from that time to enter the states. Turns out it was more like 30 days, and of course, no way of knowing this.

Fortunately, they accepted this. I don't know if they admitted the error on their side, but at the very least they admitted her. So now she's here, doing fine, albeit a bit jet lagged.

What a country we live in!

Getting Behind... Because The World Ends With You

So it's been a busy time for me. Thing is, can't talk about it on here, just yet. Which I guess almost defeats the purpose of the blog: the place where I can freely speak, post my opinions, ideas, etc. Let's just say it involves what happens next in my life, in terms of what happens next. If you know me well, feel free to contact me about this. Just keeping it off of here for now.

In the meantime, I just finished an interesting jRPG called "The World Ends With You" for Nintendo DS. It's basically a very quirky, story-based adventure of a young brooding individual who gets stuck in Shibuya. Basically, boy meets friends, boy finds out he's stuck in Shibuya, boy goes on quest to get out of Shibuya. Gameplay is not standard fare - rather, you control the main character (Neku) using the stylus on the bottom screen, and move your other player on the top screen. Sound confusing? It is!

The end result is kind of a button-mashing scribble fest, which works for the most part, but totally disorients at other times. The original soundtrack, which consists of original Tokyo club mixes was nice, but almost a bit repetitive at times.

The significance to all of this is that this is longest I've played a single game in quite some time. I think the last game I put this much effort into was Super Mario Galaxy last fall. Just not enough time these days to get 'em all done. Working on Okami slowly but surely these days... hopefully I'll make it!

Second Wednesday of the month, 10am.

And the sirens are going off, screaming like a damn banshee. Round and round this megahorn spins as it tests out the local weather emergency system. And it’s loud. Which, I like! Sounds really neat as it winds down, as it lets out this long descending pitch in excess of a minute.

The fondest memories though go back to my days of elementary school. In third grade, the timing was such that our recess was held at 10am – which just happened to be when they sounded the horn. A group of us would gather as close as possible to the source, which happened to be on top of the school gym. And as that horn screamed out its false warnings, we scream out as loud as we could. One giant symphony of pure cacophony!

The Heat is On

Summer decide to rear its head over the past week, and in full force. We went from days in the 70's to suddenly days in the 90's, and damn is it hot out there. Though! With a pool right outside my apartment, life ain't so bad. Just bad if you've got to get stuff done outside.

And the humidity that goes with it is likewise killer: we had two full days of thunderstorms last week, which while being totally awesome, the heat that followed left us with extremely high humidity. Went out mountain biking at the new MoMBA course Saturday morning, and even with clouded over skies, once it started to rain a bit it was like a full blown rain forest back there. I swear you could even see the steam starting to well up!

Shootin' for a high of 93 degrees today, good thing the A/C works...

Mind Over Matter

Brain power. Putting it all together. Bringing folks in, tapping resources. Cranking out huge results. Making it all happen. Being successful. Creating something unseen before. Providing a new view at an existing model. Retrogaming. Receiving permission to go wild. Encouraging thinking outside of a broken box. Doing it.

All these things I enjoy greatly. I am in the middle of tackling all sorts of new things to do, wrangling them together. The results will be out soon. I will share them with you.

Thunderstorms Rock!

Lightning and Thunder everything.

So it’s that time of the year again! For the cats and dogs to come down by the heavens, along with elated bots of flash energy and explosive roars. I, for one, have always enjoyed a good storm. Nothing quite like just sitting at home, looking at the window, wondering how far away each strike is. Counting the time in between (5 seconds to the mile?) Or getting the occasionally lucky one that blows up on in the street, sending a big ripple of concussive sounds right through me. Just love them!

And so last night, we got hit pretty hard. Even had the sirens going off for a bit. The game on tv must have been interrupted half a dozen times with warnings of tornado watches and even warnings in the area. Golf size hail also reported (didn’t see any where I was). Pure spring destruction outside, like some kind of beautiful symphony. And there was me, enjoying every bit of it.

It was awesome!

Flash Everything

So recently, I've gotten on a Flash binge again. To the unfamiliar, it's what's used to make those flashy ad banners, online games, website navigation systems, and so so so much more. Always been a fan, just haven't focused heavily on it in a while.

Its always great to get back to checking out the masters, as well. Folks like Erik Natzke, Yugo Nakamura, the guys at OOS, and countless others who are always pushing the envelop and keeping me inspired. Always good to have folks to look up to!

Currently doing my own development on some simple games, hopefully I'll get around to posting them.