roncli.com blog

In many ways, 2014 was a big year for me. There were a lot of big changes made right at the beginning of the year, with some exciting plans starting to form up.

Where to begin?

Music

I will always remember the end of 2013 as being a kind of inspirational epiphany for me. In the span of 4 short months I wrote 4 songs complete beginning to end, managed to record 2 of them as stripped down versions, and penned the final lyrics of a few more that had been floating around.

The only major song that has come out of 2014 is a dance-ish piece I call "Bullseye", which is designed to be more about the music than about the lyrics. Even the lyrics that are sung focus more on the melody, making strong use of some of my unique vocal inflections. There is only a single verse and chorus, but the usage of such are designed to give the song added texture, not added meaning.

The main problem here is that a grand total of zero songs were released in 2014. After having such a strong finish to 2013, I expected things to carry over into the new year. Looking back, much of the music that came out of 2013 was due to having a lot of extra time on my hands while in San Francisco. I was able to put notes to Reason because I had little else to do, and with commute times being upwards of an hour some days, it was not uncommon for me to do some writing in my head, and then later pen it down into lyrics or Reason. I haven't had nearly the luxury this year since I've not been in San Francisco at all, and opportunities to write have been few and far in between. I've got this awesome guitar I want to play around with, and just haven't had the inspiration to do anything with it.

I've always toyed with the idea of setting aside just one night and dedicate myself to nothing but my music, but right now I take care of Six Minutes To Release five nights a week, spend Fridays with Kathy, and do the Six Gaming Podcast on Saturdays. Music has been playing second fiddle to pretty much everything else these days. I don't like it, but I know that I will never lose the drive for my music. It will come back some day.

Coding

After leaving Sift in February, I took a month off and then joined HCC Insurance Holdings as a .NET programmer. So far, I've been doing a lot of VB.Net in WinForms, but this last month has seen me start to work on an ASP.NET project again. It's in C# with a Bootstrap framework, and communicates with a lot of different moving parts within the company, so it'll be an exciting project to start 2015 with.

Personally, well, I'm always full of coding projects. My big project this past year has been the remake of roncli.com. This project is designed to stretch my understanding of the node.js stack, as I'm taking advantage of projects such as Bootstrap, Rendr, and Express, and have been working with APIs from Twitter, Google Blogger, and Tumblr, with many more in the works.

roncli.com as a domain turns 15 years old this February. The current design is its second, but is one that it has had for most of its lifespan. I've grown to absolutely HATE it. I've tried a number of times to remake it but nothing ever stuck... until now. Currently, I'm nearly done with integrating the blog into the site. It is going to be a pretty big hub of all things roncli, so I don't expect it to be complete any time soon, but I have made steady progress on it since May with no signs of slowing down. The fact that I'm learning the innards of these node.js projects is arguably more valuable than the site itself.

Gaming

2014 brought about a gaming renaissance of sorts. Sure, I'm still playing World of Warcraft, but I've expanded my horizons into games such as Diablo III, League of Legends, and countless other indie games that have been slowly filling up my Steam library. I've not exactly shaken off the "hardcore casual mobile gamer" title, either, as I still am very much into gaming on my iPhone.

What brought this on was the fact that while I was with Sift, I really did not have any time to myself. Gaming became a luxury to me, something that I couldn't spend a lot of time on. Once I left Sift and realized that evenings do exist, I had a lot of free time. I began streaming to Twitch regularly, and this past July took the reins of the Six Gaming Podcast while cohost Jacob "Showsan" Showalter is deployed in the military.

Between all this and the increase in popularity of streamers and professional gamers, gaming itself has taken on a new meaning for me, and is something I feel I could take advantage of given the right environment. After I am done with roncli.com, I want to build something gamer-centric around the whole "Six Gaming" concept we've got going on, so I don't expect much to change when it comes to my gaming, at least in the early part of this next year.

Life

This year I celebrated my 5 year anniversary of marriage to my lovely wife, Kathy. The fact that I've survived this long without her trying to cash in on the life insurance policy speaks volumes. And the fact that she has supported me through so many things, both good and bad, really makes me blessed.

Leaving Sift was a hard decision. I felt I held on a lot longer than I should have. In some ways, I did. Perhaps I could have made a more positive impact by leaving sooner. Or maybe I didn't hold on long enough, as it seems as though some of the things that caused me to leave have passed. Whatever, hindsight is 20/20, and I'm not going to dwell on the could-haves. I did what I did.

And what I did was start a new job. It's quite a switch going from the rushed startup environment to the slow-paced, meticulously-planned environment of a publicly traded company. At the same time, however, many of the habits I learned while at the startup I've been able to apply to the new job, and the transition couldn't have gone better.

But there is still that bit of emptiness, that missing sense of adventure.

I only managed to take 3 trips this year. The first was our 5 year anniversary trip on a cruise around southeast Alaska in June. Then came BlizzCon in Anaheim in November. Finally, I just returned from Christmas break in Buffalo, where the temperature averaged a balmy 45 degrees, much warmer than usual.

I'm hoping to get back to the Bay Area soon. I made a lot of connections out there, some friendly, some professional, and some both! I am still very much fascinated with how differently things work out there. It was very exciting to be a part of the culture, and I look forward to my next visit out there, whenever that may be.

A Look Ahead

It's hard to predict what's going to happen in the next year, but I'm going to state my goals here. No, they're not New Year's resolutions, but rather things I want to get done and say that I've accomplished.

Complete and release full versions of "All In My Head" and "Paper"
Finish the updated roncli.com site
Grow Six Gaming into a bigger and more general gaming community
Get back to the Bay Area at least once

Some strong goals. Now, to work on fulfilling them!

Labels: Alaska, BlizzCon, Buffalo, Bullseye, Coding, Diablo III, Gaming, HCC, iPhone, League of Legends, Life, roncli.com, Six Gaming Podcast, Six Minutes To Release, Steam, World of Warcraft, Year in Review

Tuesday, February 03, 2009

I just don't keep up with this like I used to
Posted: 4:51:00 PM 0 comments

I am mildly annoyed at myself. I used to do a real good job at keeping up with what I'm doing as a way to keep contact with people out in the real world. And yet here I am, realizing yet again that it's been more than a month since my last post. Hmph.

Anyway, a lot has happened lately. First and foremost, if you don't know that I've gotten engaged, you've been out of the loop! I proposed to Kathy on the 16th at Ruth's Chris Steakhouse. It's been over 7 1/2 years since we've been together. The only explanation I can gather is that I like outdoing my brother, who's got this thing he calls the "five year rule". Well, I did 50% better than ya, bro. Heh.

Anyway, the date we're looking at is June 20, 2009, which would be 8 years exactly since we met at the Seabrook Beach Club. Which is closed. Would've made for a great reception.

So the plans have begun. The bands are bought, and all of the fun of planning is on the way. Finding a ceremony and reception site, getting a planner, booking catering and a DJ, and all the other extras that go into setting up that special day. Admittedly, I feel I'm going really slow, but we're making progress.

I did take a trip to Buffalo this year, although it was a lot shorter than usual due to me mismanaging my days off at work. I promised myself I won't do that again this year, but with the wedding, I may have little choice. Anyway, the trip was out of the ordinary, as the day before I was supposed to leave it was 60 degrees! The backyard flooded some with all the melting snow from Christmas eve and Christmas day, it was nuts. Then the next day the airport was closed because of high wind and power outages. Ugly stuff, I had to miss a day from work I couldn't afford to take.

It was there that I got the idea to get proposal plans going when my mom commented, "Maybe I should take you out to look at rings." She was surprised when I took her seriously.

Also while I was there, I got to see my brother play live again. It wasn't his usual band, but they still sounded pretty good. But the place he played out, yikes. It reminded me of when I saw my sister at a similar place the year before, except this one seemed smaller and seemed like it had four times as many people in it. We were packed wall to wall.

I also extended my luck at casinos, as I posted a $200 profit from Casino Niagara. But this time it was off of a near straight flush in Let It Ride. The last card needed to be the five of diamonds for me to walk out with some awesome five digit figure. Instead it was the queen of diamonds, which was good enough for a flush. Now, what gets me is that I don't really understand why I sat down to play that game, because I normally go exclusively for Blackjack. Not only did I win on the flush, but I kept even for the rest of my time at that table. Yet the brief time I played Blackjack, I actually lost a bit. I have to wonder what kind of uncanny sixth sense I have when it comes to gambling, because I have only really lost badly once. I figure I'm up on casinos by well over $1,000 by now. Thank goodness I don't have a casino nearby in Houston, because I would be very tempted to play frequently.

Hmm. A straight flush... that would've made for a nice wedding.

Anyway, I got a lot to talk about, so I'll try to play catchup.

Labels: Blackjack, Buffalo, Let It Ride, Life, Wedding

Monday, January 07, 2008

Vacation Roundup
Posted: 2:47:00 PM 0 comments

Well, I've been back from vacation for a few days now, and figured I'd update everything that went on.

First of all, this was actually one of my better Christmas vacations. I tell Kathy every year to remind me to take short vacations, because spending extended amounts of time with my family tend to irritate me. So this year, I went for a 9-day vacation, one of my longest.

Truth be told, it wasn't half bad this time around. Aside from one of my mom's many, many dogs using my chest as a spring board the first day there, and plenty of moments of boredom having to sit through watching television when there wasn't anything good on like a Sabres game, I actually enjoyed my stay overall this year.

Speaking of the Sabres, my brother Ryan got me tickets to the NHL Winter Classic on New Year's Day. So we went to Ralph Wilson Stadium after I picked him up from the airport. Took us over an hour and a half for what normally should be a fifteen minute drive thanks to ridiculous amounts of traffic. It was snowing lightly that day with temperatures in the lower 30's. We get to the stadium, pay $25 for parking, and get to the gate. They scan the tickets, and it tells us "Reprinted". They send us to the ticket booth. Uh oh.

Turns out that the tickets were reported stolen, and were from a block of tickets set aside for Penguins fans. After lots of arguing, Ryan finally got a new pair of tickets for face value - $39 each - and we got to see the game despite missing the first half of the first period.

Overall, the game was kind of slow, but the atmosphere was just spectacular. The Sabres really should have won the game, but their 4th straight loss was the same as any of the others, they couldn't score goals. They didn't even allow a shot in the 2nd period until there was less than 3 minutes left, but only came up with one goal. In the end, Sidney Crosby wrecked an otherwise wonderful day of hockey with a shootout victory.

They talk about playing that kind of game every year, but I hope they don't do it. That was a once-in-a-lifetime experience, and repeating it annually would make it lose the luster and specticle that it was. Really enjoyable.

By the way, Chicago is frickin' freezing. When I got to O'Hare on the 2nd on my way home, it was -6 degrees. Fahrenheit. Brr.

Labels: Buffalo, Buffalo Sabres, Life, Pittsburgh Penguins, Winter Classic

Wednesday, December 26, 2007

Lesser Computers
Posted: 12:01:00 AM 0 comments

So here I am in Buffalo on vacation for the next week plus, and having to deal with a lesser computer to do stuff from.

To give some background, I brought a bunch of disks and Kathy's laptop with me in hopes of getting some work done on my projects while I wasn't busy. Well, the laptop tends to overheat and shut off in the middle of anything intensive, like installing software. So I decided not to use the laptop for anything important, and have moved to my mom's computer.

Well, first of all I was plesantly surprised to find an Internet connection whose download speeds rivals my home computer's. But that's where the similarities end. This machine is sluggish and, up until today, outdated in terms of updates. The computer didn't even have the .NET framework on it yet, which in this day and age is amazing considering how many applications require it. It's also bloated with "factory installed" software. The CA Internet Security suite is the worst offender, running a half dozen different applications in the background.

What's worse is that this keyboard is terrible, often not letting me type a key more than once every half second, especially the "N", "W" and "L" keys. It sucks because I type over 100 WPM (I just found out the zero key does it too!), and having to slow down for this just irritates me.

But it's what I've got to deal with, all of its 512 MB RAM, until I leave here on January 2nd, so I've got to use it if I want to do anything, I suppose. At least by the time I leave, it will be all up to date, and less bloated than it was before. I think I'll be running a disk defragmenter tonight, and see if that will help as well.

Labels: Buffalo, Life

Sunday, December 23, 2007

Eleven Hours Later...
Posted: 11:45:00 PM 0 comments

Perhaps I spoke too soon. After tons of delays, we finally got a plane to Buffalo, making me 3 hours late. Oi.

Labels: Buffalo, Life

Shuffle Off To Buffalo
Posted: 4:02:00 PM 0 comments

Vacation time! I am currently writing from Houston Intercontinental Airport, enjoying a pizza from Uno Express. Yes, it's that time of year again, time to shuffle off to Buffalo.

Not learning my lesson from the last several years, I'll be staying through to the second of January. So far, I'm thinking it'll be fun, but that usually fades after a few days. Fortunately, I brought Reason, Visual Studio, and enough equipment to setup a network for the laptop at mom's place, so I'll be fairly well connected while I'm gone.

Amazingly, the airport is empty, and I have plenty of time to relax before my flight. No nightmare travel so far, which is great.

So far so good, see ya on the flip side.

Labels: Buffalo, Life

Thursday, March 01, 2007

Buffalo, Land of Snow (well, maybe next year)
Posted: 3:56:00 PM 0 comments

As usual, I spent the holidays with my mom in Buffalo, NY. Usually, around Christmastime, the weather's awful up there. I'm talking single digit temperatures that may or may not have a minus sign out in front of them and multiple snow storms that range anywhere from a few inches to several feet.

Well, this year was really odd. Buffalo got their first snowfall in early October. Apparently, it broke an 89-year old record for the most snow in one day in October. That record was broken again the next day with even more snow.

At the time, the trees still had their leaves, so the snow was being particularly weighty. A large majority of the trees couldn't take this kind of weight, so they all bent, snapped, or otherwise keeled over. When I went in December, the city still hadn't cleaned up. Anywhere there was trees, the skyline looked like a wreck, almost like a bad wind storm had been through.

What was most odd, though, was that it did not snow when I was there. Nine days without snow in Buffalo? Did hell freeze over or something?

Of course, I get back to Houston and the northeast gets hit with some ridiculous storm that saw Parish, NY, which is in another part of the state, receive about 12 feet. Buffalo was spared the worst, but it got its share.

I hate snow.

Labels: Buffalo, Life, Weather