I really need to quit with the "..." in the title :-P.

I am old. I know I don't look it, but I can feel it in my heart of hearts. Why, I feel all thin, sort of stretched, if you know what I mean: like butter that has been scraped over too much bread. That can't be right. I need a change, or something. In almost two months I'm going to be twenty and what do I have to show for it? A job, sure (more juicy on this in a sec), but as of yet no driver's license, no high school diploma and not much of a plan for the rest of my life. Well, having been kind of depressed the last few days I've decided to do something about it. Tomorrow I'm going to schedule a driving test for next week and a testing date for the GED (probably sometime in late April, early May). I am bound and determined to accomplish at least these two things before my teenage years are forever behind me.

Now, the juicy details. As you all know I am working in groceries labelling overstock and putting it on shelves in a position I'd since been calling "Overstock Manager". Well, I recieved my official designation Saturday: Grocery ICS (Inventory Control Specialist). While being a "specialist" is cool and all the real interesting part happened yesterday. I recieved an e-mail from one of my old layaway/cashier pals Blake congratulating me on my promotion to department manager. I laughed it off and told him he had the wrong guy, but this morning when I was doing training modules it had me listed under two job codes: ICS Team and Department Manager (dept. 92, dry grocery). It's so nice when they tell me these things :-P. In not even five months I've gone from a lowly layaway runner to a department managing specialist. I figure if things continue at this rate I'll be CEO of the company by the time my first year anniversary rolls around ;-).

Well, there's no more interesting news to report and thus I will sign off and go eat some food. Peace out.

Today, with any luck, we'll get a whole mess of new info from Nintendo on the Revolution. Of course, I'll be at work :-P. But, the whole reason I post this (aside from the fact that I'm a Nintendo fan boy) is because of a little cartoon my bro found. Actually, that last part is very true. On a side note, the soundtrack is awesome!

This is sad, I tell you. I've got to go to work at 8am this morning and here it is almost 1:30am and I'm awake talking about how the Revolution will r0x0r. You can tell that I have virtually no life at all. I spent most of yesterday afternoon writing a little RSS feed generator to keep track of my ACC pattern stats. Albiet it was kind of fun, but a total waste of time.

Yesterday, I also tried out America's Army, a free game developed by, surprise, the Army. The basic training missions were okay (especially the shoot house), but after that things just died off (like learning how to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation :-P). It was informative, but things like that are best left to the classroom. The complete lack of any single player missions was what turned me off in the end. I suppose I shouldn't expect anything more coming from the Army, but games aren't supposed to be real life replicas of boot camp :-P. At least now I can tell these army recruiters who come to Wal-Mart "I played the game and I didn't like it."

Well, I really must try to get some sleep now. Just remember, nitro-glycerin is incredibly dangerous and unsafe to drink :-)

First off, however, I would like to mention that I have, to some degree, started my new job. I say it that way because I'm not actually doing what I was hired to do. No, I've been stocking coffee the last three days (not today, because I was off). I guess my training will start on Thursday at roughly 8am. More on that as things develop....

Now for my ranting. Whoo! Lately, my mom has been calling pregnant gals "prego". "That gal's prego", "Oh, is she prego?". ARRGGHHH! It drives me nuts! Prego is a blasted spaghetti sauce for crying in ship!! Even Wikipedia says so! So the next time you hear somebody disgrace the name of licensed marinara sauce in such a way, do me a favor and say "Yes, that is some fine eatin'!"

After writing a beautiful, heartfelt post on Blogger and having it lost because it was never able to upload the stupid thing, I am now using Wordpress. It's completely in house (i.e. on my server) and shouldn't have any of these inane issues. Now, on to that heartfelt entry :-).

Today, Friday, March 17th marks my official last day as a cashier. Starting at 4am on Saturday I will be an Overstock Manager*. Al I looking forward to it? Yes, yes I am. Not only is the cashier job driving me insane right now, but it'll be nice ot have my day back again. I plan on using the extra time to start working towards my GED. I hereby solemnly swear that I, Matthew Scott Hackmann will obtain my GED before May 1st, 2006. There, it's in magnetic bits, can't back out now. It really is something that needs to be done, and Wally World will reimburse me anything I spend on it too :-).

My emulator is coming along quite nicely, though there are more annoying hurdles to get over yet. I can basically say that Mario Bros. and Metroid are completely playable (last I checked). Zelda and Stringer (my two new scrolling test apps) are still buggy (like it's on the wrong table all the time), but otherwise everything is looking pretty sweet. However, I'm going to hold off for now while I pursue a new project.

My Uncle Dave (hey dude :-D) was nice enough to give me his old Handspring Visor (circa 1999) and that will be my new programming toy. The only thing I really have in mind for it right now is an app to take to bowling to score games and give statistical reports on the fly. Luckily Palm has all their development stuff opened up so that'll make it much easier.

I can now say I've played Doom on my iPod. Last week, while still swept up in the initial "wow! this is cool"-ness of the whole iPod thing, I installed Linux on it and played Doom. However, it was borking up music playback on the Apple side of it so I toasted Linux and have my music playing greatness back. I'm really getting into podcasts, my favorites being this WEEK in TECH (TWiT), RevoGaming.net, and Diggnation (gotta love Kevin Rose). Also, I bought an album full of SpongeBob goodness and the theme from Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (for you old timers, the original Eagles version).

Well, I believe that's all I needed to say. Just remember, vote for Pedro and all your wildest dream will come true :-).

Just wanted to let you all know that I've moved my blog over to Blogger (I explain why there). So here's the new address (temporary): http://dxprog.blogspot.com. Once I have my new hosting and old blog posts moved over I'll have the dxprog.com address back - Matt <><