Random Thoughts, Sunday Edition

I figured I'd drop in for the annual update of this blog. It would be disingenuous to try to come up with a bunch of excuses, so let's just skip that part and move on, shall we? :)

- Really enjoyed watching the first game of the Patriots season this afternoon. All 3 facets of the team (offense, defense, special teams) contributed to the 38-24 win over the supposedly ferocious Bengals. It was great to see Brady throwing to Welker again, and I'm excited and nervous at the same time to watch the young defenders grow up on the field. The youth movement on defense is something that's been needed for a few years now, but with youth comes growing pains. All in all, I expect the offense to be fantastic and the defense to show flashes of greatness. Should be an entertaining season if nothing else.

- Also really enjoyed spending a fun and stressful weekend with the family. We transitioned the twins to toddler beds on Saturday night, and the best way to describe what's transpired is an adventure. It's tough to keep them in bed, and also to convince them to sleep. I foresee a bunch of rough nights over the next week as we work with them to understand they need to both stay in the bed and actually sleep. Come to think of it, I probably should stop at the store on the way home after work and pick up some more coffee; we're gonna need it.

The baby (she's not really a baby anymore, but I don't want her to grow up too fast) starting really crawling and pulling herself up on things last weekend, so she spent this weekend practicing all over the living room. Gone are the days when we could sit her on the floor with some toys and go do chores in the kitchen. Now we really have to pay attention or we'll come back to the living room and she'll be gone. :) It's a lot of fun to watch her explore her surrounding and discuss them with us. We're going to have our hands full with that one, I'm sure of it.

- My free time has been spent playing a lot of Torchlight. Though I bought the game shortly after its release last year, the arrival of the baby distracted me from really putting time into it. On a whim I went back to it last week, and have put 10-12 hours into it. As all of the glowing reviews said back at its release, the game is a fun Diablo-clone, made by a group of developers who made the first Diablo. The game has a certain spirit and atmosphere that makes it fun, and the character development, skill trees and (most of all) loot collecting have me coming back time and again. Since this game is resource light, I have it installed on both my home and work computers, which allows me the ability to sneak a level or two in during my lunch breaks. The fact that my character progress is saved in the Steam Cloud lets me play the same character both at work and home, making it even easier to progress in the quest. Definitely a must buy for Diablo fans.

- Work has been incredibly busy the past couple of months. I've stepped into an interim management position, overseeing three other colleagues, as well as stepping up to begin training as a project manager in earnest. In addition, the technical oversight of multiple projects for an incredibly challenging client has been given to me. Long story short, there's no shortage of things for me to do when I get to work in the morning. Honestly though, it's a welcome change as I felt a bit stagnant before seizing these opportunities. The biggest thing to look out for with the new responsibilities is to not bite off more than I can chew and start missing deadlines. That's the worst possible thing I could do at this point. I'm working on learning the strengths and weaknesses of the people I oversee and how best to work with them, so that they are busy and doing what they want to do without overloading them.

Well, that's enough of a brain dump for tonight. Hopefully I'll be back soon to do this again, as I really enjoy it. Sleep and free time willing, I'll see you all soon!