Werewolf, Ruby Hoedown '07 edition

The Ruby Hoedown was cool. But it's over now, and a group of us are in a swanky hotel lounge playing Werewolf.

Here's the cast of characters:
Joe
Chad Fowler
Lyle
Evan
Devon
Jim
Marcel Molina, (Jr!)
Rick Denatale
Tony
Ted
Ryan Daigle
Coby
Carl
A special shoutout to Stu & Justin who were unable to join us this evening.

Chad, Marcel and Joe are all expert players, and it's fun just to watch them. I've played many times before (but we called it Mafia). Everyone else is noobs.

First game I was the Seer. I found out early on that Joe was a Werewolf. Watching him closely, I easily deduced Ted was the other Werewolf. Unfortunately, I was nominated the next round by an easily misled Villager (Lyle!) and lynched in the town square. However, during my defense, I pointed out who the lyconthropes were. Chad picked up on this, which unfortunately, doomed him that night. After yet another killing, the Villagers finally found the evil in the village.

Round two, I'm a villager; and the first one killed off during the night. Giving me time to discover that this hotel provided wireless, and to write this blog.

Round three. I get to play another dead villager. This time Marcel & Chad are still in the game - and it is fun just watching the two of them. One thing that's really cool is that they are giving so much advice while they play. I've played with people that don't care about improving the other people they play with, they just want to be the best out of the group, which makes no sense to me. This remind me of the days I first jumped into Java and I got to pair with Adam Williams & Matthew Todd and learned I wasn't as good of a programmer as I thought I was. I'd say this is the best game of werewolf/mafia I've ever played. If only I could make it to the end of one. Maybe next time.

Finally, Round four - werewolf. This time I actually made it to (nearly) the end of the game. We whittled the villagers (or Visitors, in Chad's case) down to a Seer and 3 villagers, against me and Cody. The Seer says I am a werewolf, I try to defend it back to him, but no good, I go down in a unanimous vote. However, Cody was able to finish off the Seer, and get Evan lynched the next round. Victory for the werewolf!

Now I have to look forward to RubyConf 2007 for my next game...

The Cost of OS X Part II (Leopard)

"Basic version $129
Premium version $129
Business version $129
Enterprise version $129
Ultimate version $129"

Preorder from Amazon.com now.

The Cost of OS X

It may have been true years ago, but I still hear the old refrain that Macs are more expensive than PCs. Well, for those of you that need more than OS X to make you switch (though, it's hard to empathize with you there...), here's the cost justification that Macs are more affordable than PCs.

Ruby Hoedown registration is open.

Attendance is capped at 150 people, so why are you still reading this? Go register! Before it sells out.

Review: BestMed Digital Temple Thermometer

I was a little skeptical of this device at first. But it has definitely won me over. My daughter has had a little fever the past couple of days. And after several times of using the rectal thermometer, we decided to pick up this digital thermometer. You just push the button, wait 3 seconds while it adjusts to room temperature, then it beeps and you stick it to your (or your child's) temple. About 6 seconds later, it beeps again and you have a reading. I know that these external ones aren't as accurate as rectal or oral, but I have to tell you that the convenience of the immediate reading on an infant without any fuss and undressing a sick baby is amazing. My daughter doesn't seem to mind at all having it on her temple. Our philosophy is that if it shows more than a low-grade temp, we can then use the rectal.

Plus, I've enjoyed just taking my temperature because of how easy it is!

Inara

There are new photos of Inara up at http://redinger.fotki.com

These photos are from January - April. Wow, I can't believe it's been that long since I've uploaded photos of her. We used to do that every month or so.

The last time I wrote about her, she was cruising. Well, no more. She is walking now. And not just little steps and falling. She's walking all over the place. When we bring her outside, she just needs to get down so she can walk. When we bring her to the park, she climbs up the stairs and wanders all around on the playground equipment. It's amazing. And of course, when we chase after her, she picks up speed to get away from us.

We recently installed a couple sheets of rubber flooring on our concrete patio for her. She has a rocking horse out there, and she likes to just wander around. This way, when she falls, she'll hit the rubber, which is much software than the concrete. She has spent the last three days out there as much as we let her. We just leave the patio door open now, and she wanders in and out at will.

Unfortunately, she's also had a fever the past couple days. It never fails, we put her in the nursery on Sunday, by Tuesday she has a cold or something. Other than that she's extremely healthy. Today she seems to have gotten over it, so she's back to her chipper self.

Next week is her big day - first birthday! Amy's parents are flying in, her brothers are driving, and of course my parents live her now. We're inviting a couple of the kids she plays with over and we're going to have a birthday party for her (also provoking us to install the flooring mentioned above.) Looking forward to that. I guess I'll have to post some pictures...

What new baby tricks can she do... We can now ask her how old she is, and she'll hold up one finger. We're trying to teach her to blow out her candle. If we tell her to do it, she'll blow, but when I put a lit candle in front of her, she's mesmerized by it. So, she doesn't blow. But, as soon as I take it away, she blows again. We'll see if she gets it in time. She also recently learned how to blink. We were just making faces at her, and then she started scrunching up her face. Now if we tell her to blink, she'll blink her eyes and make a really cute face. It's adorable (though, impossible to get a picture of.) She loves to clap and dance. If I ask her where her Veggie Tales are, she'll point to them and start clapping and dancing, because she loves the music. This is not really that amazing, until you realize that she only watches 1 Veggie Tales movie a week. And that's all the TV she gets. But she understands that special time.

As I mentioned she has a rocking horse, and she is really good at rocking it. She gets this huge smile on her face and just starts rocking back and forth. I swear it looks like she's going to flip over. Let's hope that doesn't happen.

We're also going to dedicate her at church the week after next. We talked about this for a while, and decided we wanted to make The Journey in Cary our home, and we figured it would be nice to present her to the church on her first birthday.

As for me, I've off from work for a few weeks. It's nice to be home during the day with her, usually I miss her during this time and only get evenings and brief mornings.

So that's the quick overview of our lives. Now, Inara wants you to go enjoy those beautiful baby pictures.

Done with my .Net project

In an interesting turn of events, we got a call from our client that was having us do .Net work asking us to stop. Apparently there's some kind of political movement afoot, and our product was no longer going to be needed. Of course, this happened with one week left to go. So basically we worked out a deal where the client would get some consulting time to make up for the last week of work, and we still got paid.

Overall, I like the .Net framework. I especially loved the GridView stuff. They definitely made it easy to wire in the database and allow you to add/edit/delete (ie: CRUD) with no difficulty whatsoever. Having done that by hand previously, I really appreciated it.

I'd like to do another .Net project if the opportunity came along. Preferably C#, so I could actually use some of the tools like Resharper. I don't feel I've spent enough time with it to make an unbiased decision about how much I like/dislike .Net.

So, now that I've got a few weeks off between gigs, I'm playing with Ruby on Rails. I can say without a doubt, I love RoR.