Early Taxes

01.29.2009

Today I received my last W-2 for 2008 in the mail, and anxious to see how having 2 jobs for 75% of the year would work out for me I logged onto Amazon and downloaded this years version of TurboTax (now in my 10th year of using it!). There's good news and bad news.


I owe the federal gov't, but Alabama owes me twice(ish) what I owe the feds.

How does that work?

I don't have many forms, as my income and deductions aren't that complicated. I've got 2 W-2's and 1098 for mortgage interest. I didn't do any paying side websites for the year, so there's no extra income there. Due to that, I don't have any home office deductions.

Wish there was a way to count all of those home improvements/repairs that I had Mike the Contractor handle.

Just to be safe, I'm going to wait for a month and see if any more official looking forms make their way into my mailbox. I'm not in that big of a hurry to write a $332 check anyway.

Permalink random

Widgey 2K9!

01.26.2009

After more than 6 months since the last officially sanctioned Widgey Nite (in which Greg & I won!)), the next Widgey Nite has been scheduled for Sunday, marking not only the return of Widgey Nite, but it's the first Widgey Nite of 2009!

Due to a request by Greg, we're going to play one of the variations of the latest edition of Risk. There's supposed to be a "quick play" version, which I think just sets the number of turns in a game. I still have to pop open the box and read the rules. I've never actually played Risk, so I'm looking forward to this in a wary way.

Adding to the excitement is who may or may not show up. Lord Ford has a previous Super Bowl engagement. Evil Mathias is in Germany, and although he is scheduled to return Saturday he may be jetlagged/not know/not want to come.

But here comes Widgey 2009 baby!

Permalink boardgames

Jer & Russ' Day Of Fun Grown-Up!

01.22.2009

This past Saturday, my good close personal friend Chas along with myself, ventured out to do things that we had never (or seldom) done. No no, nothing kinky.

I picked up young Chas around 9:30 in the morning and carted him off to Nashville. We had an odd errand or two which was taking us to Nashville, so we were going to enjoy it. Sure, pretty much everything we had planned to do in Nashville could have been done in Huntsville, but there's nothing blog-worthy about that. So off to Nashville we went!

Our first stop (bank and gas station not withstanding) was J Alexanders where I introduced Chas to Steak Maui. Good, manly steak, marinaded in soy, brown sugar, ginger, and a couple of other things for 4-7 days. Yes, I talk to the wait staff too much and find out things.

Afterward we made our way to Frugal MacDoogal Wine & Spirit Warehouse, where liquors can be found 20% cheaper than in Alabama. With a combined 9 bottles of liquor, it's possible we may have qualified as bootleggers when bringing it back across the state line but I can't find anything concrete to back that up.

On the way back home (yes, we only did things in Nashville) we decided to up the ante by stopping by Madison Guns since both Chas and myself have been interested in taking up shootsmithing. Chas is a little ahead of me since he's inherited a .38 from Old Man Poplin.

Steak, liquor, guns. If we had some tobaccy the ATF would be all over us.

Instead we stopped by the comic store on the way back to Jer's house.

Permalink road trip

227½ft³

01.19.2009

I've come to a time I've been dreading as it pertains to my ever growing collection of the sweet binary media known as DVDs. I'm running out of room.

Now that I can once again use my back door, I've moved the DVD cabinets that used to live in front of the door to the spare, waiting to be painted bedroom while I figure out what to do with said cabinets. I don't really have room for them in the living room, at least anyplace where they wouldn't be in the way. The 5 cabinets primarily hold seasons of TV DVDs - and not all of them, at that. Each cabinet takes up roughly 45½ cubic feet, and I think was advertised to hold 88 DVDs. I took a rough sampling of what I've got stored in those 5 cabinets and found the following:

• There are at least 23 different series with more than 1 season.
• Those 23 series total 117 seasons of TV.
• Those 117 seasons are contained on about 580 discs.

Years ago I reduced my CD storage space by ripping what I normally listened to, storing the CD in a binder/case, and chunking the jewel case. I'm wondering if the same method will work with 580 TV DVDs.

People tend to borrow my actual movies, so it makes sense to keep those in the original boxes, but seldom do I loan out my TV series. There's not a lot of re-watching of a series. Except for an occasional Friends or Frasier, I can only remember watching Babylon 5 and ST:TNG more than once.

If I go through with this, I would undoubtedly save the original boxes/cases somewhere, more than likely thrown up in the attic in case I ever wanted to re-pack them and trade them in after DVDs go the way of the VHS.

I want something more sturdy than a nylon binder - I've just had bad luck with the sleeves in those things. I came across a 600 CD aluminum case for $29.99, or I can get it from an oddly similar site for $37.99. Both sites are owned by the same guy in Canada, so maybe I shouldn't be too paranoid. I haven't taken the next step to see how much shipping would be.

One of the 600 CD cases takes up 205 cubic feet. 22 cubic feet less than the 5 cabinets I'm using. That's a big freakin' case. Maybe I need to find something a little smaller. That stacks.

Permalink movies/tv/dvd

Torqued, Part 1

01.09.2009

For the past 5 weeks, I've been trying to get a handle on the Torque Game Engine. This is one of those projects I've been putting off for years that I'm finally going to make time for, being the eventual making of the wrestling game I've always wanted. I've talked about it before, and realistically I'm years away from making said wrestling game, but to get to the knowledge level needed to make that wrestling game I've got to start somewhere. Enter baby step #1.

I'm [arguably] a coder. Really I'm more of a hacker/cut-n-paste coder. All I've coded for the past 10 years are web applications, so real object-oriented code takes a little while for me to wrap my brain around. Torque uses a C++ style scripting language to do all kinds of cool stuff. I've got 4 books and access to tutorials, websites, and forums galore to help understand that code. If I can find where in the code to start messing around, I'll be good. After 5 weeks, I can tweak the player settings and place objects on a mission map directly in a file, but so far I don't know the right place to change things dynamically in the game. That's not to say I can't find out with relative ease, it's just that these baby steps I'm taking are extremely small.

Being [arguably] a coder, my biggest unknown in playing around with a game engine is the actual models themselves. People, vehicles, buildings, terrain, weapons. Luckily, one of the reasons I picked Torque was there is an ample supply of models that work with the engine - some free, some for a reasonable price. With those models, I can limit my bug tracking to me messing with the code, not wondering if some 3D model I've cobbled together is constructed correctly.

So after 5 weeks I can take my purchased dude model and run him around my purchased city block models. He can't shoot anything. Nothing can shoot him. He can't die. He can't even change the speed at which he runs. The bad part is that the tutorials and books are geared toward an earlier version of the engine which has changed greatly since they've updated the graphics and shaders (whatever they really are). I think I can figure it all out, it's just some more baby steps.

But this is the basis from which I can start to learn even more. Like shooting. Shooting is good.

Permalink game dev