The Occasional Blog

I just got email that I was accepted for the LittleBigPlanet beta. Not surprisingly, my kids are quite ecstatic. Having the opportunity to test play one of the most anticipated games prior to release is worth crowing about. I’ll be honest that this is largely due to the fact I work for the publisher, but not everyone is going to get in so it is an honor, nonetheless.

Not only is it an honor, but it really is a responsibility. Working for Sony is one of the best career opportunities I’ve ever had, but LittleBigPlanet is, honestly, one of the biggest titles ever for the Playstation 3 and it is in my best interest to make sure it meets every elevated expectation possible upon release.

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to talk about the experience, but I’m sure it won’t be hard to find information and, of course, you’ll be able to find out for yourself when it is released on October 21st.

My daughter Kaelyn recently started middle school as a 6th grader. It was a bit of adjustment switching from one class with one teacher to five teachers in six classes but she hit the ground running. It is a different school than she was supposed to attend so, as a result, all of her friends from last year are not in the same school. That was a bit tough for her. Fortunately, she has made friends and even had a sleep-over with a few of them this past weekend.

A parent always worries about their children’s friends and the influence they have on them. You trust that you’ve raised them well and that all the many lessons and examples sunk in. Unfortunately, sometimes no matter how much you teach your kids, they will make decisions that you disagree with.

Due to the influence of her newest friends Kaelyn has decided to use her hard-earned money to buy a Nintendo DS Lite.

What should I do? Can I love her still? Can I tolerate such deliberate rebellion in our household? I’ll do my best.

P.S. If for some reason you are confused, it will probably help to know where I work.

I was fortunate to take a week off last week and was able to enjoy a vacation “around home” with the family.

Tuesday – Toobin’

Just about an hour South-East of our home is the La Jolla Indian reservation. $15 dollars for the car for the day and $10 each for an inner tube (if you didn’t bring your own) and we had a fun time going down the San Luis Rey River.

We’ll have to go back for a whole day sometime. The water could have been a bit deeper (don’t forget to “butt up”) but it depends on how much they choose to let go from Lake Havasu.

Wednesday – The Wave

Kaelyn went to The Wave Waterpark in Vista during her last week of 5th grade and practically insisted that we all go. Unfortunately, I got sunburned but spending about 6 hours in the sun is hard to protect against.

A lazy river, competition size pool, and four water slides gave plenty of options.

Thursday – Mission Bay

One of our vendors at work treated us to an afternoon at Mission Bay a few weeks ago and I had the opportunity to ride a waverunner for the first time. Going 50 mph on the water is quite thrilling.

I decided to share the experience with the kids. Didn’t go nearly as fast but still had a fun time. We took a little spill trying to turn around which dumped all three of us in the water, but it was more fun than anything else.

Friday – Cabrillo Tide Pools

We drove down to San Diego (picking up Becky‘s mom on the way) and went to the Cabrillo National Monument.

Walking around the tide pools, we saw plenty of other folks and various forms of waterlife.

I miss being around the ocean. I grew up in Encinitas and spent much of my summers being a beach bum.

Saturday – Company Picnic

My work does a summer picnic every year. This one was in Poway (so was last year’s but we missed it) and unfortunately, was lightly attended and as a result was kinda booring.

The company events are getting more awkward as the company grows. More and more people I don’t recognize.

It was a good week. Can’t wait to do it again sometime. Granted, I’m hoping that maybe next time it’ll be sans kids.

I am on vacation this week and I honestly have to resist the urge to check in on things at work. Granted, for the past weekend I was in the mountains near Yosemite so my Blackberry was of no use, but so far this is one of the longest periods I haven’t checked email at work. If you look at the screen of my Blackberry below you’ll see that I have 2,420 unread messages:

My blackberry screen

That is since Thursday night (I’ve been on vacation since Friday). I should note that most of the mail is automated and can be scanned through in just a few minutes, but the temptation to check on it is significant.

I do keep checking to see if I’ve been paged, but I will see if I can continue to resist. I’m just hanging at or around home this week so if something important comes up, I know I’ll be contacted. When I get back next Monday I’ll have quite a bit of mail to get through, but if I can make it, I’ll be better for it.

Things are really good right now:

• The people at work are some of the sharpest I’ve ever had the honor to work with.
• I still have more things to do than time to do it but that is improving daily.
• My family is healthy (mostly) and we just love spending time together.
• Becky and I are going to be able to spend some good time together this weekend.
• I finally got my PS3 back at work and was able to get a new TV for it as well.
• I really enjoyed my two most recent reads by John Eldridge: Wild at Heart and Walking with God.
• My progression towards manager is slow but still progresses. In fact I’m being included in a trip next week to visit Insomniac (the studio that produced Spyro the Dragon, Ratchet & Clank, as well as Resistance: Fall of Man.

I have no question that I am blessed. The real question is what the Lord has in store next and if I’m paying attention enough to not ignore it.

Since I was quick to criticize Netflix for their plans to eliminate user profiles, it is only appropriate that I acknowledge and congratulate them on their recent decision to undo their plans.

I got a bit of a laugh when I saw the email as the tone when you read between the lines is quite funny. Something like “yeah, it was a dumb idea. The guy who o.k’d it is now working at 7-Eleven.” Either way, it was smart of them to listen to their customers.

Becky and I are without kids this weekend and, of course, we decided to take the opportunity and go to CostCo. While purusing the normal selection of bulk items and picking up some of our standard selection of staples, Becky saw a very unexpected surprise.

We are fans of Daphnie’s Greek Cafe which is a Greek restaurant chain headquartered in San Diego (not far from my office, btw). One of the more enjoyable items they have is Fire Feta which is a really good feta cheese spread with all sorts of spicy additions. We get it every time we go there as it is quite tasty.

So, while checking out the deli section at the back of the warehouse, Becky found a 28oz container of Daphnie’s Fire Feta for $8.49. We promptly picked it up and swung by Henry’s to get some pita chips and we are good to beat the heat.

We’ve been using Netflix for about two years now and come to really like the service. One of the better features is the ability to have different profiles each with their own queues of movies you’d like to watch. Our membership allows us to have three DVDs borrowed at a time. We set up a queue for Becky and me (for two DVDs) and one for the kids (with one DVD).

How all this works in practice is that when we return a movie from our queue, the next one in line get sent to us. Likewise, when we return a movie from the kids’ queue, it takes the top of theirs. All-in-all it is very convenient and keeps things quite organized.

Unfortunately, Netflix has announced that they will be doing away with profiles at the beginning of September. Any profile other than our main will get merged in to the main and then removed. We’ll have to make sure that one of our kids’ selections is at the top when we return theirs. What if the top one isn’t available (which happens sometimes)? I guess they lose out.

I personally don’t see why they need to do it. Perhaps they figure they’re moving through too many exchanges per subscriber each month. As many are considering (as am I) to drop their membership from 3 to 2, there’ll be some impact on their revenues. It’s already been a hit to their public image.

While I haven’t blogged about our pond as much as I originally intended, I have mentioned it before so I’m sure you are already aware of its existence. There has been a development over the last few months that I haven’t mentioned. An evil development.

About two months ago we noticed that the fish were hiding in their “tunnel” (a 6″ wide pipe about two feet long underneath the waterfall for them to hide in) all day for a day or two in a row. We concluded that they were hiding from something. Fortunately, our dogs have been good to not bother the fish so it wasn’t them. The active theory was a racoon.

We were out as a family and came home one day and saw a rather large haron flying away from our yard. It’d didn’t take much deduction to make it our suspect #1. Shortly thereafter, one of our two butterfly koi was missing. A week or two after that, the other one was gone.

Research began on the predator and learned that they are one of the more common visitors for pond owners. We also learned that they are quite crafty even going so far as to vomit into the water to lure out less cautious fish. We may be missing more but with about 27 (mostly goldfish around 4-5″) it’s hard to keep an accurate count.

We have determined the best defense is to get ourselves a scarecrow. We should receive it this week and shall hopefully reduce the tension among the inhabitants.

I also need to get some more fish.

Monday is the beginning of a transition for me at work. I’ve mentioned previously the group I work in which is called SAS-DEV. That particular group is made up of myself, three colleagues and our manager (who is also the manager of the larger SAS group). Monday, a fifth team member joins us and I start the process in becoming the SAS-DEV manager. I’m not sure how long it will take but the “official” (e.g., HR) designation won’t change until I am doing at least 51% of the work of a manager.

The whole thing is going to be a bit odd for me. I’m generally o.k. with the manager thing as I used to have two direct reports when I was at RedZone. The strange part, initially, is the fact that I’m going to be the manager for what up until now have been my peers. Ultimately, I feel this will work out for the best as I already know them, they know me, and we get along quite well both personally and professionally. If there was one time in my life where I can start this next step and not stress about it, it’s here with these folks. Yes, I know that each of them generally follow my blog but I am honestly not trying to suck up.

The other part that has me wondering is how things will look when everything is said and done. I don’t believe there is enough “managing” to be done to fill a whole workweek so it’ll probably be a half manager, half sys admin kinda thing. One of my friends referred to it as being a Sergeant which sounds about right. I’ve never stressed about my career and we’ll all feel our way through things as the weeks and months come.

To give you and idea of the support, Kristin was kind enough to put the following comic up in the window of my new office:

From Johnnie Moore’s Weblog

It hasn’t been the first ribbing since all this came up and I’m sure it won’t be the last. That’s just how we roll.