The SF Gate has a great little article on a growing community of people who are leaving books they’ve enjoyed in public places and using a website to track who ends up with their book, and if it gets passed on further from there — shades of a literary Wild Kingdom. Interesting idea, leading no doubt to interesting reading!

We had our company picnic today at West Lake Beach. Maggie won the prize for most garish outfit — a $40 gift certificate for Barnes & Noble, which I’ll happily help her spend, since she’s still preliterate. Emily got second prize in the limbo contest, earning a gift certificate to Amy’s Ice Cream, which she likes, but which I think tastes like licking sugared butter. Kathy got out on the jet ski for a while, and I enjoyed seeing work friends with their families away from the pallid fluorescent lights of the office.

A bit over 2 1/2 weeks into my diet/fitness regimen, and I’ve officially dropped 10 pounds. Things seem to be going better than I’d hoped, especially since I’ve not stuck to either the diet or the workouts absolutely rigidly. Plus, I find lifting weights to be a bit more enjoyable than slogging away on the treadmill was, in spite of the fact that I can’t read while I do it. I do miss nachos, though.

Halcyon Days was published about five years ago, and while it caught my eye at the time, I never did actually get around to reading it. It’s a collection of interviews with the programmers of many of the early computer games, back when they were still somewhat of a niche market and often programmed by a single person, rather than the multimillion dollar projects they tend to be currently (Chris Sawyer’s wonderful stuff to the contrary).

If you’re interested in the subject matter, Halcyon Days is now available in its entirety online.

Warning: this message is pretty geeky.

Neverwinter Nights shipped this week, and my copy just arrived at home. (Unfortunately, I’m at work, so won’t get to mess with it for a while.) Part of the reason I’m excited about NWN is that it’s the most complete computer-based implementation of Dungeons & Dragons ever created. It combines a strong single and multi-player game with some very nice design tools that allow you to create you own adventures for you or your friends to play through.

Though my dad and I had our share (perhaps more) of friction while I was growing up, D&D was something we could do together and quite enjoy one another’s company. Dad encouraged my creativity when I was designing my teen-aged adventures, and the game has fond associations for me as a result. I’m looking forward to having a chance to dig back into that rich gaming system, seeing what can be wrought with the tools Bioware has provided, and maybe even talking Dad into a game somewhere along the way.

It was our friends the Johnsons who first broached the idea of moving to San Marcos to us. It was Steve with whom I went to play a concert at a church in Iowa. Rene has been a great friend to Kathy, and our kids have all enjoyed playing and growing up together for the last several years.

And now, regrettably, they’re moving. Steve has long been frustrated by how difficult it has been to keep their heads above water financially when doing full-time church work, and has decided to find work that will allow him to support his family in the way he’d like. He’s looking at four different opportunities currently, none of which are local, and the closest of which is in Houston, three hours from here. It’s sad to see them getting ready to go, but I certainly understand the decision, and wish them the best. Pax vobiscum, friends.

I’ve been sticking pretty faithfully to the Testosterone Advantage Plan now for a week and a half, and am encouraged by the results. I’m gradually, but steadily, increasing the amount of weight I can deal with in the gym, and have apparently lost a full 6 pounds already. The only downside so far is a surfeit of cottage cheese in my diet, but that can be remedied with some fairly minor adjustments (and probably will be this coming week).

So far, so good!

Yesterday evening, Meara graduated from Churchill High School with honors. Emily, Abby, and I went down for the ceremony, and cheered loudly for Meara when her time came. The girls actually seemed to have fun, which came as a bit of a surprise for me, since graduation ceremonies in my experience tend toward the tedious except for the few short moments that your loved one is in the spotlight.

Congratulations, sis! You’ve done good, and we’re selfishly glad that you’re not ranging too far afield next year!

Though I’ve always gotten a lot of spam, it seems like lately much of it is just bad. Not in a moral sense, though much of it is of course that, but in a technical sense. I’ll get a message with a subject promising me that I can make $100,000 a month working from home, but when I open it, there’s nothing there. (Oh, the suspense.) Or one of the 5-10 messages a day I get with Viagra in the subject line has a MIME message that’s mangled to the point where all I get is gibberish when I open it. My latest favorite was an herbal breast-growth formula which, while it was actually legible, missed its target market pretty widely.

We’ve been putting the new Powershot A40 through its paces since it arrived. It produces great quality images, and the underwater case is a ridiculous amount of fun, especially with a nice clear, spring-fed river in town. See June 2002 Photos for the latest collection of photos, both above and below the water’s surface.