Digital Dave

This movie was incredibly raunchy, and amazingly funny. I don’t think I could watch it more than one time, but that first time was pretty good. I highly recommend it. That is if you are into the whole stupid humor thing. If you don’t know anything about it, it revolves around a few high school kids trying to get laid before they move off to college (next gen American Pie anyone?). The entire theater couldn’t stop laughing though nearly all of the movie, so there are plenty of great moments.

I did see a trailer to the new Resident Evil: Extinction. That one looks like it will be pretty good.  If you haven’t seen that trailer yet, check it out.  Click here to check out a trailer.

School starts Monday!  Thank goodness.  I’m about ready to get back into motion.  I love breaks away from school, but I also enjoy learning new things and being around the academic atmosphere.  I’m taking some interesting courses this semester.   One being a networking course that will utilize Java and maybe some C++.  I could use a Java course right about now, I haven’t touched Java for a while.   Another course deals with business programming that will be pretty easy.  I’ll get to come away with having experience programming in COBAL.  Not sure when I’ll ever use it after college, but it never hurts to pick up a new language.  Other than that I’ll be taking a philosophy course (business ethics), a finance course (equity securities and markets), and a biology course (which will finish my 14 hour science requirement, thank goodness).

So, not a bad line up.  I was going to take a Game  Programming course that utilizes  DX9, but I ended up having to drop it to save myself the pain of taking 3 programming courses next fall.  It’s only offered during the fall semester, so I may be out of luck with that course.

I didn’t do a whole heck of a lot today.  I noticed that the federal reserve cut the discount rate.  Which doesn’t mean a whole lot to individual investors, as it deals with the rate at which businesses loan each other money.  I’m still hoping for that interest rate cut next month.

Spent some time fixing my moms computer.  Picked up a copy of Windows Vista from newegg (sys builders copy), and installed that beast.  She rarely uses the computer, so I doubt the flaws will mess with her.

Have you seen the game Bioshock?!  It doesn’t release until the 21st, but the game is getting incredible reviews.  A few:

• Games Radar = 10
• Eurogamer = 10
• 1UP = 10
• Game Informer = 10
• IGN = 9.7
• PC Zone = 9.6
• PC Gamer = 9.5

This game had not been on my radar until just a few days ago when I noticed all of these reviews pouring out.  I’ve rarely ever seen so many 10′s for a game and my first thought was, “Ok… These people could not find a single thing wrong with this game?”  I started looking into the game via pictures, movies, websites, etc, and I’ve got to say ‘whoah.’  It has a LOT of hype, but it looks like it could possibly live up to it all.  Everything I have seen is making me want to play it.  I don’t own a 360, so I’ll be waiting to grab it for my PC.

It looks like Jack Thompson is already gunning for this game to be off the shelf and out of your kids hands.  If you don’t know who Jack is, he is a very outspoken critic of video game violence.  As unrealistic as this game looks, he’s still going after it.  I wrote a research paper on video game violence that included some information about him. I may be post it in the future, but I’ll leave it up to you to Google him if you are unaware of who this man is.

The girl and I are heading out to see Superbad tonight.  Movie looks hilarious.

Just a quick update. I do not have the assets that I need to put together the development page, so I’ll be waiting until next week before the site is fully finalized. I did not realize I did not have my projects on this external hd I brought home.

So, if you are an investor, you are on this roller coaster ride. I’m fairly new to investing, having taken fully control of my portfolio back in march. Just a few weeks ago, my portfolio was sitting at a 16% gain. And, now that is irrelevant. It just amazes me on how the effects of this credit crisis affects the entire market like this. Sure, if it is difficult to get money, it’s hard to spend money, which doesn’t bring in the money for companies. And… That pretty much kicks profitability down the drain, thus giving no reason to own the stock.

But talk about a mind game. You don’t want to sell in a crisis like this. It’s difficult to look at the losses, but once the market finds it’s correction spot, then the train will be in motion again. I can’t pretend to have the experience of going through something like this, but I can’t also see any reason to sell my investments right now, even though those 50% gains are now sitting at a fraction of that amount. I’ve invested in solid large cap companies (grmn, pcu, mrk), and a small cap natural gas company (clne).

This does make for a good buying opportunity. It’s unfortunate that I’m a student, not generating a whole heck of a lot of income. But, I do have some cash on hand that I forked into the portfolio, and am now just sitting tight for an opportunity.

So, what happens now? How does a market fix itself from here, to send those indexes up, instead of down? Is this the fault of investors? Should the fed step in and lower rates? I mean, they’ve forked in billions of dollars into the markets. I think that if this trend does continue, they will have no choice, but to raise the rates. They need to. DOW down over 1000+ points in less than a month. Credit problems, and a freaked out economy.

It is fun to watch the attitudes of the people that work for CNBC. You can tell the pains that they all feel while they are reporting. Getting snippy at each other and such. I’m definitely not alone. But, I couldn’t imagine dealing with a MUCH larger portfolio than I deal with. Looking at THOSE kinds of losses would be brutal. Those mutual fund managers that are down billions of dollars…

Is it sadistic to think that this is fun (in a way)?

But, before I get to those, I watched 300 today… Talk about an awesome movie!  It started a little slower than I would have liked, but once it started, it hauled.  Great story, lots of animated blood, and some great battles.   I definitely recommend renting this one if you have not seen it and are into action flicks.

I’ve added a few pages; about, development, images, resume, transcript, and writing.  One future addition may be tutorials, but the layout is good for now.  I’ve implemented the about page, and the transcript page (for those wanting an idea of my college experience).  I have one more story to link up to my writing page, and that’ll cover it.  I plan on putting together the development page tomorrow, which will take me a good time to get done.   Everything should be done by Friday (I hope).

Well… Hello, World.

For the past 2 years, I’ve had my blog hosted on a game development website, GameDev.NET. While it was a great place to be, I couldn’t resist buying up my own domain to be hosted by a friend for free. I also need a site where I can keep a personal portfolio of my projects. Looks like this will do!

I’ve spent the last two years working in the independent game development scene, and I’ve come to a realization that it just isn’t for me (career wise). I am WAY behind the curve, and as hard as I worked for those two years, I felt like I got nowhere closer to making me a better candidate for employment in the games industry as a programmer.

Granted, I still have a year-and-a-half left at Kansas State University. But I think it’s time for me to spend this last year-and-a-half here working on the software side of the house.

From the game development side of development I’ve experienced working on small independent projects that had gone retail. I’ve experienced the designing phase of writing short story ideas, and watching those ideas come to life on the screen. I’ve done an incredible amount of testing for people. I’ve developed a couple of games, one of which was a Breakout Clone (which I hope to have in a download section soon, including source (C++/SDL)). All of this in my spare time. So, I am no stranger to dedication, initiative, and working hard.

So, this blog will not only house some of my personal experiences from random thoughts, but it will also house some of my independent software projects that I work through. I would also love to begin writing tutorials to help solidify my understanding, and to help those that are just beginning. I don’t intend for this blog to reach out to that many people. But for those that it does reach out to, I hope you can get something out of it. I am always up for meeting with new people, helping, and best of all, I am only one instant message away.

You can get a idea of who I am in my about page, but I can summarize here in my first post.

I spent 4 years on Active Duty for the Marine Corps (2001 – 2005), and am now serving the last few months of my contract in the inactive ready reserve. In addition to that, I am currently a student at Kansas State University. I will be graduating December 2008 with a B.S. in Information Systems. Next summer I hope to earn an internship at Google, Lockheed Martin, Facebook, or any other company that might give me a chance to work on their vision. Depending on if I get an offer to move into a full time position after graduation, I might go for a M.S.E. We’ll see.

I enjoy programming. I don’t claim to be anywhere close to being an expert, and I learn something new every time I open my compiler. My main choice of languages are C++ and C#. Why? Mainly because I have yet to dive much deeper in any other languages. However, I have experience with Java, and ASM.

I don’t have a rich history with programming. Getting my first computer at 15, and leaving for the Marine Corps at 17, didn’t really give me a lot of time to program. However, I did dabble with Visual Basic while I was 16. I Got into the Marines and found little time to do anything with computers. Once I got out and started school, I did get into C++ during my game development phase, and used C# for a period of time to create a map builder tool.

But, the last couple of months has been pretty lazy. I haven’t opened the compiler due to some tough courses I was taking over the summer. In addition, I was taking on a new hobby — Equity Investing.

School starts this coming Monday, and I’ll be back into the swing of programming. I have a business programming course that will utilize COBAL (erm?), and a networking course that will either use Java or C++ (pretty sure it’ll be C++).

Other than that stuff, I enjoy the Harry Potter movies, reading through various books from programming to business, bowling, learning, chess, messing with my new Husky, and spending time with my girlfriend, Megan. I can’t believe I waited so long to watch those HP movies… I just watched those last week, and they were friggin’ awesome! I just picked up the movie 300, which I hope to watch tomorrow! Yeah, I’m slow, I hardly ever watch TV… To busy messing around on the computer. And I’m sure you can only imagine what being a game developer can do to somebodies life…

That’ll be it for now. Take care!