Ty’s Weblog

We drove Xander and Mira just south of Richmond yesterday and met my parents there. We moved the car seats over to my parent’s car and the kids went home with them. They’ve been very excited about this trip since we first planned it. It’ll be Xander’s second trip down there without us, and Mira’s first. We’re hoping that she does ok with it. We know Xander will, since he did so great last time.

They were doing great at bedtime at least. We Skyped with them just before they went off to bed and they were both in high spirits and had had a wonderful day. We were very happy to hear that things seem to be going well.

We are pretty much addicted to Wii Sports around our house these days. All four of us are playing it on a fairly regular basis. One of our favorite games is bowling. So, I was pretty impressed when I came across someone who has built a Lego robot that can bowl a perfect game.

Scientists, good ones anyway, are just different kinds of people.

I think this comic sums up the difference quite nicely.

I’ve been converted. For a long time, I really didn’t get into Object Oriented Programming. I was a procedural guy, and I was fine with that. I understood the basics of how to do OOAP, but it was never really my thing. Now I think differently. I took a class this week on Design Patterns and it has completely changed how I look at coding. I’m convinced that for large projects, OOAP is the way to go. It’s not to say that I’ll never do procedural programming again. It still has its place and like all the tools I’ve learned, I’ll use it when it is the right one. But now, I’ve got a great new tool that I think is very powerful and that I’ll be giving a lot more consideration from now on.

We got about 3″ of snow out of the storm last night. We went out this morning and got in some bonus sledding, which was a lot of fun. Then we took a little walk around the neighborhood to just enjoy the extra snow. We sure didn’t expect to have another snow in March, but I’ll take it.

Things have already started to melt. The roads are already pretty much clear since they were plowed last night. The sun has melted the last layer of ice that the plows had left behind. All in all, it was a nice little snow storm.

I should mention that is was 80° and beautiful on Wednesday. Today it’s 32° and snowing. We are expecting between 2″ and 8″ overnight.

Xander’s second tooth came out today while he was at school. He saved it in the little bag we’d sent with him in case that happened. He was very excited.

He also bowled 110 during PE at school today and won his match. He was very excited about that also.

About 11 months later, we are done with Kingdom Hearts II.  It was an amazing game.  Playing only with Xander sure extended the amount of time the game took.  So did having to complete the Journal in order to see the “secret movie” at the end.  Like the first one though, it was worth the work.  We completed the game last night, and were well rewarded.  I sure hope that they make a Kingdom Hearts III, but even if they don’t they did a great job with the ending on this one, so the series does feel complete with this ending.  Xander is having a great time playing Chain of Memories on his DS currently.  I think I’m going to let him take a shot at the PS2 games once he is done with it.  Great stories, great characters, great game play, great boss battles, great ending.  What more could I ask for in a game?

I love my Wii. It’s an awesome game system and we are all enjoying it. Xander and I have played countless hours of Wii Sports together. He’s started beating me in bowling now. All the Wii Sports games are a lot of fun though. My Dad and I played it for hours when they were up for Xander’s birthday. I think he’s going to end up owning one. The controls are just so natural for the Wii Sports games. Mira even plays bowling and tennis with Xander and me. If you can only get one system and you have kids, I think the Wii is by far the best choice. I’m just amazed by how much fun we are having with it as a family.