field marshall hrádek

Sadly, it's been a while since I've posted any pictures. My apologies! Here is a random assortment of things that we've been doing lately. The first batch includes pics of the family, the messy kids, our nephew, and some interesting things.

This second set was from this week's trip to Snoqualmie Falls. Since Monday we've gone to the pool, the park, enjoyed a picnic, did this road trip. I've been studying and working on my resume. It's been actually really nice to have some extra time.

I am trying not to be afraid of what the future holds. It's easy to feel panic at times but we've been trying to stay optimistic. If anyone wants to cheer me up, give me a call. You know the number.

Crystal and her friend Heather spent a few nights in Seattle this week. Let me tell you, after having to wake up 4 to 7 times in the middle of the night to get Helen back to sleep I miss her! Well, actually, I miss her for more then that but wow was this a difficult experience especially since I had to work each day.

Anyway, it went well. Henry and Helen were both fairly reasonable during the days. Monday Crystal's sister watched them for about 2 hours, Tuesday my mom watched them for about 9 hours. Thankfully my sis showed up to give her a hand! Wednesday Jerry and Jeanine watched them for most of the day. Henry was so upset he was leaving their nephew behind he threw a fit all the way home!

During Crystal's visit to the big city she found a Bavarian Butcher which sold my beloved Hungarian Brand hard salami and... blood sausage. It was fantastic to relieve a little of my youth. I am so glad she thought of me. German blood sausage is the same as the Polish variant minus the barley. Man, it's so nice to have found a supplier that is locale!

Crystal got some good rest. She says she could have used a little longer. I understand for sure.

Anyway, the above pics are random picks of the kids recently. My gorgeous wife, my beautiful girl, and my handsome little man. Yes, even superman has to clean the toilet sometime!

I dressed up as Captain Kirk this year. Henry was a dinosaur and Helen was a lamb. It was all ridiculously cute!

We had a lot of fun stopping by our families' homes for some trick or treating.

Today I got down and actually got my recording stuff working. I pulled out the microphone, plugged everything in, and worked on dialing in the levels. Things are odd, though. My preamp is coming in at the right level and my mixer board seems set right but the input card is static and I don't want to add gain anywhere before that because it seems to add distortion. Anyway, it's a start and I am glad to finally get into it.

Here's a little something about our trip to a Bonny Lake farm to pick up some pumpkins. We went along with Crystal's dad, his wife, and their son and had a pretty fun time. We were actually most looking forward to the corn maze but we got there a wee bit late and chose the haunted hay ride instead. Unfortunately, it was a little short and we had no idea that it ended with a haunted house; not really meant for children. Of that experience, the best part was the vertigo room. Amazing to feel your eyes deceiving your body into doing something else!

This last weekend the family went to the Seattle Science Center. It was a lot of fun and the place was a lot bigger than I imagined. We started in the dinosaur section which terrified Henry. After we took a break to play with the over sized chess pieces the bug exhibit was a hit. I think Henry was the loudest kid there pointing at each and every pinned specimen and shouting "BUG"!

It was our second choice, actually. We initially wanted to take the kids to the zoo but weather decided otherwise. I haven't been there for a long time. Some of the stuff was interesting.

After that we stopped and got groceries just in time for Jerry and Jeanine to come over for dinner and discussion. It was nice to have people over. I have gone through more of my boxes and expect for a couple stacks in the house most of our stuff is unpacked.

Here is a track by Electrixx titled Tokyo Rush (Original Mix):

The fella from church was able to get my tire fixed which is wonderful. I put the wheel on and took my car for a spin. It feels really good when things are in good order. In a couple weeks (read: next paycheck) I will be getting my wheels aligned. I'd like to also install my sub-woofers into my car. It's been more than five years since those babies have played sound. I really wish my car had Internet so I can stream my tunes to the car. I have found satellite radio severely lacking in both quality and selection.

I admit that driving again has me a little stressed at times. Riding the bus and ferry systems has shielded me from "road politics". I suppose one has to deal with politics wherever there are other people. So far I have found that I get to work in about 45 minutes if I drive to Seattle and take I-90 to Bellevue. I-405 is its usual cluster fuck 4 out of 5 weekdays in the mornings. Driving home after six has been fine.

Oh! Navy Field has quasi announced a sequel Navy Field 2. It will be at least another year before it is released but I am very happy the company has decided to continue developing the series. I just upgraded my ship to the next light cruiser called the "M Project". It has less armor but an extra turret spot compared to its predecessor: the Königsberg.

PAX is upon us and I have been enjoying looking at all the latest in game development. Most of Friday I spent helping set up the booth and then after the place opened to press I tried looking around at other booths. I got some shots of the finished booths and then finally when the gates opened to the fans.

We had to buy our cursory t-shirts there and I picked up these shirts with art by one of my favorite pin-up artists.

There were a lot of cool things to look at this year. It was bigger and much more crowded than last year's PAX. I was happy to not participate in any tournaments (this year's main event on the PCs was Team Fortress 2). Most booths generated a good amount of excitement.

There was limited interested in Guild Wars. It's been out for a while and with Blizzard, Bioware, Valve, and others showing off their latest and greatest it wasn't too crazy. Regardless, we have some pretty dedicated fans. All our tournaments filled up, our swag all given away, and our after party was a huge success.

Henry destroyed our little camera so we're in the process of replacement. In other words, every shot was taken on my cell phone so pardon the crappy 2 megapixel quality. I had to pick my parents up from the airport at around 3 on Saturday so I wasn't able to get to PAX until almost 5. No worries, we'd seen most of the stuff the day before. It was the after party with free drinks, food, and conversation that made up for it. Being at Gameworks, Crystal took her gambling machine skills to new heights and won enough tickets to get Henry a few toys. I got a few tickets to invite friends to the party but everyone bailed. What's new? Lame.

Next year's PAX presence for ArenaNet will be much bigger being closer to the release of Guild Wars 2. The rest of our booth focused a lot on Aion, Tabula Rasa, and City of Heroes with only a couple machines dedicated to Exteel and Dungeon Runners. My only complaint about the booth design is that although it understandably showcased the NCSoft family of titles, it really didn't allow for ArenaNet a lot of space to do the usual tournaments, fan games, and artist art signing that we do.

Today I got to work and helped load up the van. Around 1 we headed over to Gameworks in Seattle to drop off the swag for the party and raffles. The convention center is across the street so it was quick to park in the convention center garage. The convention center was swarming with activity. Lots of people moving big crates and machinery around. The folks from NCSoft were already there and had made considerable progress on the booths. We basically helped place all the computers and accessories to all the stations.

Power and network was slow to arrive so we went to a lounge to have some beer and snacks. When we got back power was in our booth and we had somewhat of a network. It was painfully slow at first but eventually ports were configured and we were successful in installing our game and configuring the new-out-of-box Dell systems to what we needed.

There was nothing particularly amazing to see today since no machines were really on. The War Hammer Online folks were making a ruckus with their trailers and Blizzard took up a bunch of space in anticipation for their upcoming expansion to WoW and Starcraft II. THQ, Nintendo, Microsoft, and Wizards also had considerable booth space. I was surprised (not sure why) that CCP will again show up showing off EVE. I am mostly looking forward to Bioware's new RPG game and Valve's Left for Dead. There are a couple other titles that elude me at this time.

It is all a very hurried process but we had contractors do all the major construction. Once all the equipment was located on pallets it was easy to put computers together. Most of the stuff is being sent back to the manufacturers. It is interesting to see how so many computers and displays get constructed.

I really hope PAX remains the new E3 and remains accessible for fans; people who actually play the game. It makes it a much bigger bang for the buck when press, industry, and consumers can wow over the up and coming. I am really stoked about this year's event. I haven't signed up for any tournaments so there won't be a huge time suck dealing with it and I can then enjoy the stuff. The kids are both going to babysitters, thank goodness, so Crystal and I can really go at it this time. We'll see how things pan out.

I missed the 9:05 boat home so I am sitting in the ferry terminal waiting for the 10:30. I am really tired and I have to get up early tomorrow to finish updating the computers and making sure everything is ready. I hope to see you there!

She was born at a little after 6 PM weighing in at 8 pounds 10 ounces. She is beautiful.

Of course I bawled my eyes out. I will have to post more later. We're all tired.

The man shower was a big hit. Thanks to Nate I really enjoyed myself and I am grateful I had a chance to let loose. We celebrated until 1 in the morning or so when we all passed out. I remember sleeping on the floor in the hallway and then moving around. It was an odd night.

I pulled pix off my cell phone. I forget to do it so this goes a ways back. The last two shots are from the man shower. That giant glass is what Nate calls a double admiral. I like to call it a super admiral.

Otherwise I've been working quite heavily on my laptop making music and stuff. I ordered a 25 key controller. i will need a sound card because the built in one is total crap. The input/output latencies make using the laptop for anything music wise really hard.

I've revived my work on the RSSWriter feed editor program I was working on. Our old one doesn't work in 64-bit Vista and mine does so it's cool to get to show that off a little.

Crystal and I are ramping up for the new baby in June. I leave for Austin on the 27th so let's keep our fingers crossed that she doesn't come out early!

And some things I wanted to share:

• http://www.torproject.org/ — Running your torrent and browsing through proxies. A little slow for web browsing.
• https://addons.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/addon/2275 — You need this to use Tor while browsing.
• http://www.vuze.com/ — I used only Azurues but I think Vuze is the wave of the future.
• http://www.seattlecheesefestival.com — Do I need to comment?
• http://www.myfavouriteillusion.co.uk/ — Awesome band I came across while reading up on Reaper.

It's been suddenly super stressful at work as I work furiously to fix some vulnerabilities and trying to maintain what's left of my shattered ego. It is a good lesson. I thought I had all my ducks in a row but I missed some details. I will post about it later when I get things under control.

Also, I bought a couple new instruments! I found a Lowry electric organ for $12.49 at Good Will in decent shape. It's got bass pedals, a volume pedal, two keyboards (49 key I think) and switches to boot. It's not a Hammond like I want but it's plenty to mess with. I also got a 25 key controller that I can take with me on the ferry rides to and from work. It's awesome to have 2 hours every day to be creative. If I don't feel like it I can program or sleep but I like this recent ability to exert creative energy.

Some upcoming titles:

• Ferry Ride
• Zum Arbeit
• Inspiration
• Card Swipe
• Wade Through Filth

It's a concept album inspired by commutes to and from work.

It's taken a week but I am finally back onto PST. I am quite disappointed in myself for not getting to pub crawl with everyone while over there. I think I should have managed my caffeine better. It's good to be home. Right now I am working on bringing some of the things we discussed into reality.

We've moved in our office. Our time in our nice room is over as we all shuffle around to make room for other teams.

Henry has been talking and learning really quick. It's really cool to see him picking up on words and being proud. Yesterday I came home from work and he brought to me a little art project he and mommy were working on. Completely melt-your-heart cute!

Oh and when I got back our sewer water wasn't draining. And even more horrifically, when one flushed the toilet ghastly things would bubble up in the bath tub! It turns out our main sewer line had some roots that had helped create a massive clog. $500 and a call to a plumber fixed that. That was a lot of money, though.

Right now I'm a little Civ 4 and SimCity Societies. Both are actually quite good. The only MMO I've been hanging onto is Tabula Rasa because we get it free through work. Otherwise, I am out of it for a while until Age of Conan. This has freed considerable time for Crystal and I to work on some new music. It's been really productive and I am very excited to share the fruits of our musical labor. Finally an outlet for our creative side!