It's 2024

Long time, no typing.

Since my last post in 2022, I left Netflix.  I started at Fanatics Betting & Gaming in May 2022 as a distinguished engineer and I've had some fun projects, but I'm still in a bit of an emotional funk.

I've been working on doing some XNA optimization for RTResolution to try to get around the SpriteBatch batch size limitations.

I've got my house back to myself for the first time since the pandemic started.

I've set my profile to private on Twitter.  I'm on BlueSky as romsteady.bsky.social now.

Going to be traveling to Idaho for the next four days for a family engagement.

Silence

I haven't had a lot to say over the past bit.  My employer shifted into games, so I've had to stop working on a lot of games stuff.  Still trying to find the next focus for this blog.

Stay tuned.

Budget Planning

I was recently approached about a position which had a mixed bag for compensation.  Take-home pay would be one-third lower, but total compensation would end up 50% over my current total comp.  I used the opportunity to try to sketch out a rough budget to see what would have to go if I did have my take-home drop by a third each check.

It was a bit of an eye-opening experience.  Realistically, I'm one of the fortunate ones who would be able to withstand a hit that large per check.  There are some elements I'd have to modify about my lifestyle, but most of those involve "mad money" or disposable income.  Those elements wouldn't vanish from my lifestyle, but would be drastically curtailed.

I've got a couple of things that would help mitigate that reduction.  My Kia is scheduled to be done being paid off by May 2022.  My HVAC loan is a large chunk of cash each month, but will be done by end of January 2023.  I've got three large expenses coming up in March, April, and June, but nothing major planned for the rest of the year.

Realistically, I'm considering trying to live with this budget for the next two months out of curiosity.  The money that I'm not going to be spending will be split in two: half going to my emergency savings account, and the other half going towards my largest bills.

Game Mods Moving To Patreon

Starting next month, I'm going to be able to block time out for dedicated work on game mods, and starting in September, I'm going to have a dedicated room just for my game development work.

Work on new mods is going to move to my Patreon.

The Terraria mod I'm going to be working on is codenamed TSA (Terraria Server Assistant).  Basically, I'm going to be using the Mono.Cecil work that I spearheaded with the Terraria client to expose a lot more information through the server and extend its command support.

The Quake 1/2 work I'm going to be working on involves making mods easier to make in this day and age.

The Hollow Knight mod I'm working on is a rather simple tombstone mod so you'll know every place that you died during your entire run.

The Left 4 Dead 2 work I'm doing involves finishing up some of the unfinished mutations in ShackMutations.

There's no reason to join or donate unless you want early access as all of the mods will be released for free.

WTF is happening?

On RomTerraria:  The latest tModLoader should have the same scaling unlocking code that I had in RomTerraria.  At this point, consider RomTerraria discontinued unless something insane happens.

On Electric Eye:  Still working on the open source release, although we've started moving towards EyePatch at work for a more accurate result.  The patent I got screwed up the timing, and I'm still waiting to figure out what's going on with the international patent.

On my life:  Bought a house.  Will be moving first two weeks of September.  Planning on retiring in mid- to late-2030.

Dev Machine Down

When I woke up this morning, I noticed that there had been a power outage while I slept.  When I went to turn on my main rig, all the fans started up, but I didn't even get a beep code.  The last time this happened to me, it was because the motherboard had failed.

I've had this machine for about two years, so it was time for me to upgrade anyway.  My new machine should arrive in about a week, but I'm going to be on my Mac Mini for the next week or so.

These things happen.

Minor Update

Rejoined the IGDA.

Now have a Unity Plus license for the next year.

Still working on shit.

GMTK Game Jam Tomorrow

There's a Game Maker's Toolkit Game Jam starting tomorrow and I'm going to try to livestream my attempt at participating.

I'm going to set up a simple test stream tonight and if all goes well, I'll post the stream links in a new post tomorrow night.  I'll be participating from 6pm PDT Friday through 6pm PDT on Sunday and will put my final bits up on itch.io.

Plans For The Rest Of June 2017

This week is all about scrambling to get caught up after being out of the office for two weeks and potentially being out of the office next week.

Next week, I have to fulfill a summons for jury duty so I may or may not be working on any given day.

On June 25, I'm going to be a wheel monitor for the Netflix float in the San Francisco Pride Parade.

After that, I'm hoping to get back to my personal projects.

Back in Town

I have returned to the Bay Area and will resume work on RomTerraria tomorrow afternoon.

Tonight is reserved for something else...

Pinball Hall of Fame

Will be flying back home tomorrow where I will have access to my development environment again.

In the meantime, here are several photos from the Pinball Hall of Fame in Las Vegas.

Out Of Town Until June 8

Will hopefully resume updates then.

Nightmares

I need to get back to having nightmares about work.  At least something productive comes from those.

Last night, I had a nightmare about becoming a brain in a jar.

I was marched down a long hallway and when I got to the room at the end, someone behind me injected me with something that caused immediate paralysis.  I was slowly lowered to the floor while panic was setting in.

Shortly after reaching the floor, I felt a sharp pain and I felt like I couldn't breathe and that my heart was stopped.  Having my vision shift so that I was looking down on my decapitated body quickly led to further panic.  It was followed by a brief sensation of pressure on my skull and then...nothing.  No external stimuli whatsoever.  Just me, alone in my own brain with my thoughts.

A fate worse than death.

Ten Years Out

I left the games industry in December 2006.

I've looked back, and while there are things I miss, I won't be going back into games full-time until I can go back on my own terms.

In Japan

I'm currently sitting in my hotel room at the InterContinental Osaka getting ready for the next two weeks of work.  I'll be back in the United States after October 13.

During the next few weeks, I'll be unable to do any work on RomTerraria.  Even if I could do some work on it, I'm sitting here with a MacBook Air and wouldn't be able to test the high resolution features.

Schedule For Next Six Weeks

The next few weeks are going to be a bit insane, so here's a heads-up about what to expect.

This weekend, I'm going to be in Salt Lake City, Utah and unable to make any updates to RomTerraria during that time.

I'm hoping to get at least one more RomTerraria update out before October 1, 2016, but I can't guarantee anything.

From October 1 through October 15, 2016, I'm going to be in Japan and South Korea for work.  During that time, there will be no updates to RomTerraria, even if Re-Logic releases v1.3.4.

The next planned update for RomTerraria after my trip will be around the end of October 2016.

Todd in the Shadows Review #2

Yes, this was my request.  Deal with it.

My previous request, "St. Elmo's Fire (Man in Motion)," is on Vimeo.

Vacation Coming

I'm going to be in New Orleans from June 23 through June 27.

During that time, I'm going to be responding to very little.

Public Venting About Private Matters

Please forgive the momentary diversion into LiveJournal land.

I've never considered myself to be a "catch."  Growing up, I was awkward, lanky, and had the physical attributes of a string bean without the nutrition.  My voice has always been nasal.  Even when I drop my voice an octave for public speaking, it's still torture for anyone who listens to me.

I was even worse personality-wise.  Until I was in my mid-twenties, I was a complete and utter asshole.  The laundry list of shit that was wrong with me could fill multiple pages, but I'm going to skip that for now and just say that I was surprised that I got married back in 1994.

I consider the first five years of my marriage to have been essentially karmic payback for the shit I did before then.  My late wife had chronic pain and used alcohol to self-medicate.  Unfortunately, the alcohol shut off her filters and, well, I got my comeuppance.  During the first five years of my marriage, my wife accused me of cheating on her nine times...including once with a guy.  Mind you, it's not like where I was at any time was a secret.  My work schedule was on the fridge at home, and since I either walked or used public transportation to each job, every moment of my day could be accounted for.  Didn't matter.  She'd been cheated on before, and so she saw a cheater in everyone. 

Having that feeling of distrust aimed at me was a large part of what led me to change my own behavior for the better.  I basically tried to be the person that I should have been all along.  I helped my friends out whenever I could, whether it was financially or by giving them a place to stay for a few months.  I tried to always help my neighbors, whether it was ingredients, batteries, babysitting, you name it.  I didn't always succeed, and I could tell that sometimes I was being taken advantage of, but helping others made me feel better.  It eventually stopped being a conscious decision and just became second nature.

Being a better person didn't stop the distrust, though.  After fifteen years of marriage, I told her that if she ever accused me of cheating on her again, I'd actually do it.  She then accused me of cheating on her with an employee of mine.  I never did actually cheat on her, but I stopped wearing my wedding ring then.

Now let's fast forward to last November.  My home was a total disaster area before my wife died for a variety of reasons, and while I was trying to get it taken care of, I was too close to the problem to make more than a token dent.

In late November, I met a single mom who needed a charger for her MacBook Pro through NextDoor.  Well, I say "single."  She's still technically married, but is separated and the only reason that she's not divorced is so that her kid can stay insured.  One thing led to another and we became friends.  She needed some extra cash, so we drafted a contract and I paid her part-time hours to help me get my house in order.  While the contract was supposed to end in March, I extended it to April 22 to help her out.  We've still remained friends, though.  She's storing some stuff in my garage temporarily while she moves, and has used me as a sounding board when she needed to.

In late January, I started to dip my toes into the dating scene and after a few dates with a few different ladies, I eventually started dating one lady exclusively.  My biggest concern was that she kept reminding me of parts of my late wife that I hated.  Her biggest problem was that I was telling her that.  She didn't think it was fair for me to constantly compare her to my late wife.  I came around to that point of view and made a conscious effort to stop it.

The lady I was dating didn't like the fact that I had a female housekeeper.  Turns out that her ex-husband cheated on her with the help.  Oh, boy...you can see where this is going.

The two finally met last Monday before my trip to Utah.  The meeting lasted less than a minute.  Today, I was accused of cheating as well as other things.

The funny part of all of this is that I can see exactly why she'd think I was cheating on her.  I haven't been, but I can see the dots that she's connecting.  The weird part of all of this is that there are three ways that I could have stopped this from happening, and I don't think I'd do any of them.

1. I could have stopped my friendship after the contract ended.  I wasn't going to do that.  I don't turn my back on friends.  She helped me get my life back on track, and turning my back on her would be a foolish thing for me to do.
2. I could have not let her store stuff in my garage.  I could have done this, but it goes back to point #1.  I've got a lot of space that I'm not using...why let it go to waste?  Let her save her money for her new home.
3. I was told that moving out of this house would effectively stop the accusations.  My lease doesn't expire until November 2017, and while I'm looking at candidate one-bedrooms to move to, I'm not going to start looking in earnest until mid-summer of next year.  I'm not going to break my lease now even though I'm in too large of a place for me.

Regardless, if I have to choose between living a life of suspicion or a life of solitude, I'm going to choose solitude at this point in my life.  This may change in the future, but this is where I'm at now.

When Are We No Longer Ourselves?

This post is going to be a bit more philosophical and involve quite a bit more navel-gazing than my normal posts, but please bear with me for a bit.

This week, I traveled back to Utah to see my granddaughter graduate from high school.  Years ago, both my late wife and I promised her that we'd be there to see her graduate, and while my deceased wife was understandably not able to fulfill her part of the agreement, I made sure that I was here to help celebrate this important milestone.

On an entirely different thread, I've had a plan for the past decade about how I was going to handle my eventual retirement.  I've got a decent savings goal, and when I hit that goal, I was planning on moving back to Utah, buying a new house, and spending my remaining years making small indie games.

I bring this up because, well, my visit for my granddaughter has thrown a large monkey wrench into my retirement plans.  Essentially, while I had already been questioning my plan to return to Utah because of some absolutely moronic political decisions that the state had been making over the last few years, this visit pretty much helped me decide that unless something drastic happens in my life necessitating my relocation to Utah, I would never move back.

To understand why, we need to briefly walk through two thought exercises.  You have a car that has a lot of reliability problems. You replace a part. Is it still the same car? You replace another, and another, and another.  Is it still the same car?  You replace every single part.  Is it still the same car?

Likewise, every cell in the human body is replaced every seven years (approximately).  Are you the same you that you were a minute ago?  A year ago?  Seven years ago?

I think this trip gave me my answer.  You aren't the same you.  You aren't even the same you that you were when you started reading this.  You have changed...and so have I.

What led me down this road of thought was this trip.  This was my third trip back to Utah over the last decade, but only the first one where I got to spend time exploring.  I'd never felt like I belonged in Utah, but I also had never felt as alien as I had on this trip, so I decided to try to figure it out.

Geographically, a lot has changed.  Eight of the eleven jobs that I had in Utah are no more.  Three of the houses I lived in are gone.  The restaurants that I had both of my first dates in are gone.  Jewelry stores where I bought the engagement and wedding rings are gone.  My peaceful alcove in Adams Canyon is gone.  Favorite stores, restaurants, friends, gone.  These are just surface level changes, but they add up.  Enough has changed over the last decade that while I recognize the basic contours of the state, it's no longer the same state that I left.

It's the same for me personally.  I've changed significantly since I moved to Texas to try to find my fortune.  While there are plenty of physical changes, I'm also quite a bit different mentally and emotionally.

I think the big difference is perception.  You don't notice that you are changing day to day unless something drastic changes.  The people you are with don't notice the changes either.  People you haven't seen in a bit do notice the changes, though.  It's just that the level of change from sighting to sighting has increased.

Utah has changed to the point where it feels alien to me.  The odd part is that I feel like I've changed enough since leaving that the me who was me when I lived here also feels alien to me.

At this point, I'm going to need to start from scratch on determining what to do when I retire.  I've still got time, but I like to be prepared.  After all, who knows who I will be then?