dave_b93

Sorry, this is something only Warcraft people would care about, but we got the last boss in one of the hardest instances in the game down for the first time on Wednesday night.

http://www.wowmeteronline.com/combat/log/996254

If you actually care which one I am, I'm the one in the back left behind the 'Perjur' nameplate. ( no, my character's name is the only one not showing in the pictures. It's Nishan if you're looking at the combat report.)

drinking friday night at PAX

I had to clean out one of the spare rooms here today . Both spare rooms are already very sparsely populated, but I had started to overflow some of my stuff into what will be the baby's room, and the stuff had to go.

Old snowboard boots, volleyball kneepads, and some cycling gear were easy to just move farther into storage; or send to the thrift shop. The hardest part is pruning down novels. Why is it so hard for me to get rid of books? I had a 3 shelf bookshelf full of books that I was not allowed to just move to another room.

I'm sad to say, that today I'm no longer the owner of any Dragonlance novels. Also no more Star Wars novels. The housewarming present from the MADD house is no longer around anymore either, so no more reading aloud from Victorian Erotic Tales and seeing who cracks up first. Piers Anthony did not make the cut. The Death Gate cycle and all the Timothy Zahn did make the cut. I'm not sure why I held onto Weis&Hickman's Death Gate Cycle, It just seemed like something I might read again.

The hardest books for me to get rid of were James Blish's Cities in Flight and R Meluch's War Birds http://www.amazon.ca/War-Birds-R-Meluch/dp/0451161122 They weren't great literature, but they were fun reads, and they were Doug and my first ... serious Sci FI novels. The Amtrack Wars is another series that went which wasn't too bad. I'm not that sorry to lose Neil Stephenson's Zodiac. ( Cryptonomacon made it though )

It's easy to keep the Asimov, and the Gaiman, and the Pratchett. I just wish I had room for more books.

To those of you who are currently following me. Whoah, long time no see. To those who aren't, this is hopefully a way to catch up.

What have I done in the last 3 years?

Work

When I last posted, I was working for Blackboard, still on the UBC campus. I had just gotten back from PAX 2006. In August 2007, Blackboard announced that they were offering relocation to Washington DC to about ninety percent of the people in Vancouver, the other 10 percent were being let go. A third of the relocate people could choose to stay in Vancouver and keep their jobs if they wanted.

I had the option of moving to Washington DC, or quitting. After some serious thinking, I tentatively choose DC while applying to various local companies. The day of the deadline I was still waiting to hear back from a company. It came back no. I was going to DC. 1 week later Next Level Games interviewed me, and offered me a job. I stayed in Vancouver but lost out on the severance package. Oh well.

At Next Level I was working on an undisclosed game, the predecessor to what became Punch Out. I hadn't worked in games before, and I hadn't worked in C in forever so things were very new and exciting. I didn't realize that the game didn't have a solid direction, and probably wasn't going to make it. When they canceled the project, I was let go. They had 1 project with a lot of people ramping off, and I was the new guy. I had a really good time there, and so getting let go hurt.

I picked myself up, and got going on interviews. There were quite a few good ones, in the end it came down to Rockstar, Relic, and EA. It was a tough choice, but I'm pretty glad I chose Relic. I've been here for the past 2 years. I've worked on Company of Heroes: Opposing Fronts, Company of Heroes Online, and Dawn of War II. I really like the people here, and am really happy with what I'm working on.

Personal
I proposed to Nicola sometime in January or February 2008. We were married Nicola Oct 5th, 2008.

Our first child is due Dec 7th, 2009 - no we don't know the gender, yes we do have names picked. yes we know it's not twins.

Snowboarding has been decreasing in frequency the past few years. I still enjoy it, but Nicola hasn't been able to wear contacts, so it's not been as much fun for her. I hope to get in 10 days this year, but with the child coming, we'll see.

I sold my car this spring. I'll miss it, but I wasn't using a car. If I need one I can borrow Nicola's

Been playing a lot of World of Warcraft.

I stopped playing ultimate on a regular basis. I miss it, I don't miss organizing people for that every week.

Cool vacations of note
- China for work, march 2008. Even though we worked way too much the trip was awesome. I probably won't get sent to Korea for CoHO but I probably wouldn't complain if I did.
We've been going to Portland for a weekend in the late fall the past few years for a WoW guild meetup. That has been a lot of fun. Looking forward to going again this year.
- Mexico for Mike and Shelly's wedding.
- Had an awesome time at Shannon and Jordan's wedding this summer in the Okanagan.
- PAX every year. It's getting easier to wrangle people, there were 11 of us over 2 rooms ( or 14 of us over 4 rooms if you really want to count. ) It has been awesome every time.

Biggest thing that jumped out and got me to pay attention to it at PAX this year?
Borderlands looks awesome. I'm probably going PC, depending on who of my friends I can convince.

Other things i saw
- Starcraft 2 and left for dead 2, but those are probably self evident. The wow expansion looked typical. Wow is starting to lose it's luster

i don't have time for a big post but i've got some pictures from PAX http://dbeleznay.dyndns.org/gallery/view_album.php?set_albumName=PAX06

i might update more later.

I had an awesome time. I spent probably too much time in various tournaments, but all in all it was a fairly relaxing PAX for me. The final competition of the Omegathon was a little bit lame, they were given tetris to play (woot!) and told to do 30 lines as fast as they could. Neither of them were playing that well, they were going for tetrises, not for speed.

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=4261701022851065123&q

okay, that's in german, but you get the point.

Multi input touch screen demo

so uh yeah...

My old cellphone jumped off the bedside table the night before we left New York. I didn't notice or hear about it till the morning when I went to get my stuff.. It no longer stays turned on. The screen kind of lights up but nothing shows up, and it turns itself off after about 15 seconds.

I'll try repairing it once I get a hold of the proper screwdriver ( a weird 5 pointed star shape), but in the meantime, this seemed like a good enough opportunity to switch to a new cellphone.

Meet the Nokia 6670. I'm fairly happy with it so far, but I'm still in the process of figuring out what it can and can't do. Here's the breakdown so far ( in +/- notation )

- it's bigger than the old phone ( but not by much )
+ it synchs directly with outlook via bluetooth or usb cable.
+ it has an address book that's actually useful and actually keeps items all under the same person, instead of storing them seperately but duplicating the persons name

neither - better camera, can take 10 minute movies....

there's probably more, but I've got to go.


The biggest benefit I'm going to get out of this is the address book and the synching. Unfortunately because the majority of my contacts were stored on the old phone instead of the SIM card, I've had to resort to a year old backup. sometime soon I'm going to have to verify everyone's info with them.