In a move that is sure to make Dad McMains proud, Emily came home today with the news that she had won a bike and helmet in a poster contest for Law Enforcement Appreciation Day. Additionally, she’ll get to participate in the bike parade and the BBQ that tops the day off.

The San Marcos Confederate Air Force Hanger at the San Marcos airport is the place to be on March 29 for the event. (There will also be an auction, though I’m not sure what they’re auctioning. Maybe I can pick up a radar gun to scare people who speed past me at 90 MPH on the highway.)

Congratulations, Emily! Unfortunately, I don’t have a picture of the poster to put up at the moment, as it’s currently in the custody of law enforcement. So to speak.

The game I work on, Ultima Online, recently put out its latest major exansion, Age of Shadows. The enthusiastic response to that package has put our subscriber numbers up to the highest point in UO’s history. It’s rather remarkable to see a nearly-six year old game still going strong, especially when there are other games in the same conceptual space that are (let’s be honest) a lot prettier to look at.

I think the key to UO’s enduring appeal is the richness of the gameplay. Though the visual advances with Age of Shadows (and the original production of a 3D client) are significant, there are lots of other games where you can get better eye candy. However, there are very few other games where you can make a viable career out of baking or mining, or which have an in-game plant breeding system complete with simulated mendelian genetics, or which have anything like the level of flexibility in building character housing that UO now sports. Some of my coworkers have been playing off and on for several years, and are still discovering new things about the game world.

Hooray for depth!

Last Friday and Saturday, I attended an Investing Seminar put on by Investools, Inc. Mom McMains had heard about the seminar through someone who dropped by her office to pitch it, and asked that I come along too, suspecting that we’d be able to help each other out with it and that I might benefit from the information presented as well.

The class itself was pretty interesting. The instructors were good; they covered a lot of material and made it quite accessible. I learned a lot, especially on the second day, when they discussed trading options, covered call strategies, and a fair bit more. Even after having done a fair bit of reading on financial management and investing before, there was a lot of material that was new to me.

On the other hand, once I got home and have started looking at charts and trying to put their strategies into practice, things start to look a lot less clear. They recommend looking for certain signals to time your purchase and sale of stocks. Looking over historical charts makes it appear that system won’t work nearly as reliably as they make it sound like it does in the class, which is probably to be expected.

Anyway, I’m keeping a little notebook and trying to apply some of these new strategeies. We’ll see how it goes.

In celebration of my 33rd birthday, Kathy had arranged babysitting for all of the kids for a full 48 hours toward the end of last week. We had a great time puttering about, just enjoying leisure for a couple of days. Some highlights:

• Seeing Pubcrawler at Fado in downtown Austin. This experience has rekindled my enthusiasm for playing Celtic music.
• Having a super mexican lunch at Juan Enrique’s in Wimberley while playing our first game of Chrononauts.
• Wandering the hill country for an afternoon, ostensibly with an eye toward investment property, but at least as much just for the sheer pleasure of being outside in this beatiful area on one of the nicest days of the year thus far.
• Visiting the Sable V art gallery, one of my favorites in the area, and discovering Michael Silva’s lovely and remarkable Pigskin Glass.

Thanks for arranging the lovely time, Kathy!

This past weekend, I played my usual first-Sunday-of-the-month gig with The Grant Mazak Band. It was a great time, owing to an unusually large crowd, a party for the marriage of Mike & Mary (two of the crowd that we usually see at these events), a celebration of Texas Independence Day (all Mexican beers double price!), and my mom’s early birthday present of a giant, triplane kite with a five foot wingspan. Can’t wait to try that baby out!

I’ve created a couple of new toys lately that some of you might find useful or amusing. Since these are built on top of Konfabulator, you’ll need both that and Mac OS X to use these.

The first is SiteWatcher. It’s a simple utility that, given a web page address, periodically loads it and pings its host to provide information on how the web server is performing. Useful mostly for system administrators.

The second one is far more fun: the MST3K widget, which adds Mike Nelson, Crow T. Robot, and Tom Servo from Mystery Science Theater 3000 to the bottom of your screen. They’ll watch your activity, and occassionally provide trenchant commentary on the goings-on.

The New Yorker is making some of the stories they publish available online. A recent one by George Saunders, entitled Jon, is a poignant and affecting coming-of-age tale. Recommended reading!

Kathy has instructed me to take March 6 and 7 off from work, and hinted that it has something to do with my birthday, which is on the 10th. (I was due to be born on St. Patrick’s day, but was a week early, for probably the only time in my first two decades of life.) She has also been hitting the web rather heavily and insisting that I not look at the browser history afterwards. Today she was talking with another friend of hers on the phone, and when I came in to get a drink, furtively slunk into another room, later mentioning that it had to do with birthday goings-on as well.

My curiosity is piqued!

Steve has been after me for a while to get some photos of the arcade project posted. Witness the glory of the Arcade Project Photos page!

We’ve still got some work to do, but progress has been slow of late. This is partially because we needed a bit of a break to remind our Significant Others that yes, indeed, we do still love them, and partially due to the fact that instead of working on it, we can play Galaga! And Robotron! And Centipede! And Pole Position! And Moon Patrol! And Defender! And Blasteroids! And 1943! And Mr. Do! And Donkey Kong! And Pac Man! And Joust! And Battle Zone! And…

So, I’m doing my taxes. I sold a bunch of stock this year at a loss, as you might expect. Ameritrade dutifully sends out the appropriate form showing the sales, but doesn’t include any information on how much I paid for the stocks originally — information which I need for my tax return. I check their online archives, but they don’t go back far enough to show the original purchase. The only recourse I have there is evidently to shell out $5 a pop for copies of the trade confirmations. Grrr.

Time to go rooting through the last couple years of financial records, trying to find the stupid records that they should have online, or better, have included with the tax form. I think I’ll take my accounts back to eTrade — they’re much better about this sort of thing.