"Computer programming is tremendous fun. Like music, it is a skill that derives from an unknown blend of innate talent and constant practice. Like drawing, it can be shaped to a variety of ends - commercial, artistic, and pure entertainment. Programmers have a well-deserved reputation for working long hours but are rarely credited with being driven by creative fevers. Programmers talk about software development on weekends, vacations, and over meals not because they lack imagination, but because their imagination reveals worlds that others cannot see." -- Larry O'Brien and Bruce Eckel in Thinking in C#

Fortunately my two dollars were well spent because the game is as great as I remember! I actually can't believe how deep this 15 year old game is. It's a little difficult to get started, but I found some gameplay videos on youtube and a strategy guide that helped me get back up to speed. Last night I played for an hour or so before getting in bed to read... and then I got back up at midnight and played until 2am! It's been quite a while since a game caused me to lose track of time!

So with this new evidence, I guess it's real, we're having another baby. Until last night, I kind of thought Kara was just getting fat. :p

Here's a pic of the little dude:

Dune by Frank Herbert
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert A. Heinlein
The Gods Themselves by Isaac Asimov
Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card
A Deepness in the Sky by Vernor Vinge

Honorable mention goes to Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson. It's not traditional sci-fi, but an excellent fiction novel with an emphasis on science about the Allied codebreakers of WWII.

When we got back to our place, I searched craigslist for month-to-month rentals and found a few. We ended up going to see a place in West Seattle and basically decided to take it on the spot. The bus commute is about 30 minutes and it's got a decent walk score, so that's nice. It's kind of dated inside, but we'll probably only be there for a few months, so it should be fine. The toilet, sink and tub are pink, so that's awesome!

Anyway, I figured this would be a good chance to try out West Seattle because we've considered buying a house over there. Here's where our place is, we'll be moving in by the end of the month, so come visit!

Before we went, I told Dave that I bought a $10 iPhone app for geocaching, and we both agreed that it was rip-off-expensive. I showed him a limited free one that he could use, and he tried that out on his phone. At one point Dave's limited version stopped being useful, so we relied only on my phone... Until Dave happily announced "I'm useful again!" He had bought the $10 app, so I guess that means he likes it!

If anyone out there wants to try it, let me know and we'll schedule a time to go out! It's really fun!!

Geocaching is a hobby where people hide boxes of things in random places and then post the exact latitude and longitude of the boxes. The idea is that other people then try to find the box by using maps and GPS. If you want to take something from the box, you leave something else of equal value. And in the box is a little log book where people write their names and the date they found it.

I described the idea to Kara and she seemed mildly interested. Neither of us knew what to expect, but we bundled up Jessica and headed off to the closest cache from our apartment. It was a short 0.3 miles, but when we arrived we couldn't find the cache. We had no idea what size the box should be, or where to really look, and we eventually decided to give up and walk to the next closest cache.

This one went much better, we found the trail after a short amount of searching, and found the cache laying on the ground. The cache had a few toys in it, so we took a little plastic horse. We didn't leave anything because we didn't know about that rule yet!

When we got back to our apartment, we hopped in the car and headed off to my parents house for lunch. On the drive over, I was looking up reviews on iPhone apps for geocaching. There was a free trial version that showed nearby caches, so as we pulled up I launched it. There was a cache less than 300 feet from my parents' house! So when we got a few spare minutes, Kara and I hiked out to find it. This one had a clue which helped us find a teeny tiny tube that held a rolled up piece of paper. We had no idea that these caches could be so small, so we weren't surprised that we hadn't found the first cache we attempted.

On the drive home from my parents', I looked up caches in Washington Park to see if we wanted to try for another. There was one called the Little Girl Cache that had toys for girls in it. We decided to drive up there and try to locate it. This one took a while of wandering around, but Kara ventured into the bushes a bit and came back with a green box in her hand. We looked through it and found a sticker of a cat that we thought Jessica might like. We now knew about the 'take one, leave one' rule, so we left the plastic horse that we found earlier. With the cache found, we then turned our attention to our surroundings. We walked down to a giant play structure and Jessica and I played on a swing. The rose garden was in full bloom, so we walked over there and looked at tons of flowers. Then we headed back to the car because it was soon to be Jessica's dinner time.

So, geocaching was a hit! We attempted 4 and found 3 on our first day. We're talking about going out again on Monday to find more, and to try again for the one we couldn't find. It's surprising how many caches there are around, so if you want to give it a try, go to geocaching.com!

The have locked my account for 10-14 days while they investigate. They said they'd reverse the charges and get my account back to normal.

Looks like I was wrong about the keylogger. Someone called Xbox customer support two days ago and convinced them that they were me and then asked to reset my password. Supposedly the person would have had to have all my details (name, address, phone number, last 4 of my credit card, etc) to get this done. At least that means my computer probably isn't compromised, which is nice because I wasn't looking forward to wiping it...

Fortunately my Hotmail is forwarded to my gmail account, so I was able to see that they were charging things. I quickly changed my hotmail password to something new and resecured my Hotmail account. It wasn't until hours later that I got home and was able to turn on the Xbox to see the damage. It looks like my account has been completely wiped out: gamertag is different, no friends, no messages. I was only able to resecure my Xbox Live account because I could log into xbox.com to see what my gamertag was changed to!

I think I have cut these guys out now, but we'll see if they can get back in. I noticed that they had changed my Hotmail's alternative email (the one a replacement password gets mailed to if you say you forgot it). I changed that back to an email account I own, but nice try fellas...

Xbox customer support isn't open until morning, so I have to wait until then to report the fraud, get the charges reversed, and see if my account can be recovered.

And here's a scribbled on version where I point out all the cool things I get for my effort:

And the main benefit isn't even scribbled in the picture above, it's being able to background apps. Now I can background Pandora and listen to music while doing whatever else on my phone! There is also a drop down settings tab that I can get access to while running any other app. So no more dropping out of Safari to turn off WiFi when the connection is bad, etc. Add to that some ubergeek features like a bash terminal and the ability to SSH onto my phone, and it makes me wonder why I waited so long to do this!

The only caveat is that I have to be selective on what I run... I installed a popular theme manager called WinterBoard but even with minimal theme adjustments it made my phone run slower. Fortunately other people had the same issue, so there is a lightweight alternative called BossPaper that works great!!

So if you try to call me and I don't answer, it's probably because I'm too busy making my phone do anything and everything besides making calls...