Categories
Adventure

High School Reunion

It’s truly hard to believe, but my high school’s 20th reunion was this weekend. So hard to believe how fast 20 years could go by. Pretty much all my friends whom I keep in touch were attending, but I was really looking forward to seeing all the other great people whom I don’t get to see much of any more.

The reunion was held at the Linwood Country Club which is conveniently close to me, so that was pretty great. I think it turned out to be a bit too big for the amount of people, but it was a nice spot overall.

I saw so many old friends, it was great. It’s amazing how easy it was to talk to everyone and at times it felt like no time had passed. We really had a great class, and I’m so glad to see how well everyone is doing. Especially proud of my Linwood classmates, they are still the best!

I did my best not to talk to my friends whom I still keep in touch with, as I already talk to them all the time anyway. I probably should have practiced on what else to say besides, “hi, so how are you?”, but luckily most the the responders had excellent follow up questions.

It turned out to be a pretty great time, and the only drawback is that we only do this every 10 years. I’d be down for a something a bit more frequent. A great time!

Categories
Video Games

Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker

Captain Toad: Treasure TrackerHaving just moved and still settling in I needed something goofy to occupy some free time a month or 2 ago, I picked up a copy of Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker for the Wii U. Seemed like a light puzzle game, something not too involved.

I was impressed. The art and concept were really cool. Captain Toad and Toadette were very amusing, and the bright colors were refreshing break from what seems to be so many dark and violent video games.

While most of the puzzles were fairly easy to solve, some of the hidden things on the levels were a bit challenging. I do believe I do consult the internet to figure a few out (aka cheating).

Happy and fun stuff.

Categories
Books

The Poisonwood Bible

The Poisonwood BibleA new person at the library with a nose ring recommended The Poisonwood Bible out of the blue. I’m easy to please, so I accepted the recommendation. She then said she never read it, but it was mentioned on a list she saw recently. I didn’t waver and took it home.

It started a bit slow for me and after a few chapters I thought I had gotten a “girl” book. It turned out that it was a good book, and I started to breeze through it once I got going.

I really liked how different chapters were told from different characters points of view. That’s a style that when done right I have really enjoyed in the past.

I also liked that while fiction it did revolve around historical facts. I found myself researching the Belgian Congo a bit while reading. Very interesting.

Categories
Development

FileMerge

I had to compare 2 hefty directories, and was looking for a slick Diff tool to help me out. I really was looking for something with a slick GUI to help me sort through my potential mess of code and files.

After a bit of searching I realized that I had FileMerge already on my Mac as part of Xcode.

Once I fired up FileMerge all I had to do was drab the 2 directories I wanted to compare into each side of the GUI, then run a comparison. It was exactly what I needed for this task and saved me who knows how much time.

Categories
Books

Revival

RevivalI saw a new Stephen King book at the library and figured to give it a shot. I’ve liked a couple of his other books, so why not.

I really enjoyed it. It was a bit on the dark side, but that’s to be expected of course. I’m sure glad I don’t live in on of his stories, those characters sure have it rough.

I’ve never heard of the term “the fifth business”, and now I’m trying to figure out if I know anyone who fits the bill.

The ending was a bit of a surprise even though I was expecting a surprise. So that was nice.

Categories
Books

The Innovators

The InnovatorsWhen I saw The Innovators, then realized whom the author was I immediately made up my mind to borrow this book from the library and give it a read. I really enjoyed Isaacson’s Steve Jobs book and already have a big interest in the history of computing.

It was a really great book. Covering the very early concepts and idea machines, to the transistor, the personal computer and the Internet. So many various aspects were touched upon.

I found the info on the creation of the transistor and microchip to be interesting. I suppose I’d known the least about this respective area compared to the other areas detailed.

It was a long book and it did take me more than 4 weeks to complete, but I did find it most interesting.