Two weekends ago, Elaine and I went to an event with our household, Griffone d'Oro, and got to see Duke Eli's Re-Knighting. I made a web page chronicle of the event (though I really wish I had time to fight too!!), which can be viewed here.

I weight 185 pounds.

I’ve weighed around 185 pounds now for many many years. Oddly, while my waist has gotten thicker, the weight still stays the same.

I’ve tried varying my diet and exercise. If I eat whatever I want (like a big bowl of ice cream every day, a full lunch and dinner, a chocolate bar, 2 pounds of skittles), I weigh around 187 pounds. If I try really hard to be, not eating between meals, do aerobics 2-3 times a week and add in other forms of exercise, that is when I hit 190.

Right now I’m trying to go overboard with my regimen. I do aerobics 2 times a week (Tuesday and Thursday, and also on Saturday if I’m not at an event and I can drag my lazy ass out of bed), free weights on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, and fight practice on Sunday. All of these activities, except fight practice, occur first thing in the morning, before I wake up, so I’m too tired not to go and work out.

My main problem is my travel schedule. Last week all I could do were pushups in my room because I was in Japan. Next week I’ll be gone for two nights, so there goes a day of weights and aerobics.

Aside from travel, though, I’m am going to do my best to keep to my schedule. This time I’m being smart and easing into thing. For step aerobics, I only raise the step by one platform, so I’m just a small puddle of sweat on the floor when I’m done. For free weights (and I use the Top Shape workout), I’m starting out with two exercises per muscle group, instead of three. I still feel the soreness quite nicely in my muscles the next day, but I’m looking forward to the full workout. I figure by the middle of May I’ll be ready.

According to the University of Michigan, with a medium frame at 6’ tall I should weigh between 152 and 165 pounds (the tables assume you are wearing 5 pounds of clothes – my numbers are for when I’m naked, which is how I weigh myself and aren’t you glad you asked?).

Yeah, right.

I like being 185. If I can just reduce my waist, add muscle tone, and do something about my unibrow, I’ll be happy with my progress.

Not that I need to achieve that goal to be happy. I’m happy already. The journey itself makes me happier.

If only my body didn’t ache so much…

I just flew back from Tokyo, and boy are my arms tired.

Sorry, I just needed to get that out of the way as quickly as possible.

The trip was okay. We made the standard business contacts, which took the form of the following scenarios:

Me: Hi! Are you a developer of a Massive Multiplayer Game?
Person: [shakes head and backs away slowly]

Me: Hi! Are you a developer of a Massive Multiplayer Game?
Person: [takes CD and paper] Domo. [Looks at me confused, because he doesn’t speak English.]
Gene: Konichiwa….[Gene does speak English, and things to well from there.]

Me: Hi! Are you a developer of a Massive Multiplayer Game?
Doug: Charles, I work for you. I’m the lead programmer for this technology, remember?
Me: Oh right. More sake over here!

Me: Hi! Are you a developer of a Massive Multiplayer Game?
Person: Yes! Here is a wheel barrel full of money for you!
Gene [on phone]: Charles, wake up, you over slept!

I did get to speak with one of our major competitors (he was from Virginia, so we had at least 500 words that we both understood), and I have a number of contacts that we will follow up with. I just need to figure out how to type in Kenji and I’ll be all set.

Tokyo, by a great circle route over Alaska, is around 6,500 miles away. The flight out took 12.5 hours. Lucky, due to the time of day and fear of debilitating diseases, the aircraft was practically empty. I had unfilled seats on either side, so I was able to get some sleep and even stretch comfortably.

We also got to see three movies. The one I enjoyed the most, surprisingly enough, was Drumline. It stared, of all people, Orlando Jones (“Make 7 up yours!”), in a serious role where he did an excellent job. I enjoyed the movie. It made me wish my marching band experiences were that structured. Sure, the movie was a bit predictable, but not completely, and the music was a ton of fun.

They showed the second Harry Potter movie, which I slept through, and another movie that I’d never heard of before that was quite good, but since I have no idea what the title of it was, I can’t point you to it.

And yes, on the flight, many people were doing their Michael Jackson impersonation by wearing a surgical mask over their mouth and nose. Not many, but some. On the plane, and in Japan, maybe 3% of the people wore masks. Not a lot in any statistical sense, but enough to notice.

The hotel was amazing. It wasn’t a coffin sized room that you hear about. This room was larger than my first apartment with Elaine, having a fun bathroom with shower and hot tub, two twin beds, two recliners and a desk. People came by to supply you with ice and hot water. I think it cost $250/night, which is just insane. Come to think of it, that amount was more that what Elaine and I paid in rent for a month at that first apartment. And this one didn’t have cockroaches.

Tokyo is 13 hours ahead of us. So I woke up at 4 AM and couldn’t get back to sleep. I had fun watching some Japanese TV and what they brought in from satellite.

Breakfast was like the hotel room: highly expensive and highly amazing. So many different types of food at the buffet, include smoked salmon and some dishes that are unpronounceable to my gangin mouth.

As I noted above, the Playstation Middleware Expo was okay. There was not one bit of swag there, which was quite disappointing. Still, it was fun talking to people who I’ll never see again. It was great that we had Gene there. He is half Japanese and is fluent. We would have been lost without him.

That night we thought we’d go to dinner that the really nice place at the top of the hotel. Price per person: $150 minimum. Yes, $150. Considering that I’d already spent my bonus here, we gave it a pass. We were recommended a nice place about two kilometers away, and it was, in fact, a very nice Japanese restaurant. They played some jazz music, made you remove your shoes, and had you sit on straw mats. It wasn’t touristy at all, and we of course, except for Gene, had no idea what we were ordering. Whatever it was, it was all quite delicious. I even liked the things that looked like fish eyes in a nice soft sauce.

That night I slept quite well. I only woke up about every two hours, finally giving up at 6 AM. We had another expensive breakfast, and then followed Gene to the electronics district.

Wow. What a paradise. If you want any type of electronics, this is the place, from ham radio parts to the smallest laptops I’ve ever seen. They even had Little Mermaid CD labels! I was strong, I didn’t buy any.

The most surreal part of that trip downtown was the train ride. The 50 car train (yes, fifty – five zero) pulled up, and it was packed solid. Sardines would have felt claustrophobic. So what did everyone who wanted to get on the train do? They got on the train. I felt like I was in that circus act, where 20 clowns come out of a small VW rabbit. You couldn’t fall over because, well, you couldn’t fall over. And for the next five stops, more people got on than got off!! I’m glad that most of the Japanese people are thin.

Our flight left Tokyo at 4 PM. Again, we saw three movies. The first was the Kevin Kline flick The Emperor’s Club. It was enjoyable, and quite simple and, well, nice. I like Kevin Kline as an actor, so the movie was a good way to pass the time.

I wish I could have said the same about Star Trek: Nemesis. What a waste. I didn’t care about the plot, the characters, or anything. What was the point of the movie? The ending had this “big surprise” that I just didn’t care about. I used to care about the characters. I guess all those episodes of Voyager and Enterprise have just deadened my liking of Star Trek, which is a shame.

The flight back took only 11.5 hours. Unfortunately, the plane was packed (though not like a Tokyo train). Even seat was filled. I got to sit next to a woman from Korea and another woman from India. They didn’t wear masks. There were many crying babies, who also didn’t wear masks. The flight attendants wore masks, making me feel very secure as they explained what to do incase the aircraft fall from the sky like a brick.

I got three hours of sleep. We arrived two hours before we left, and I’m staying up right now waiting for the Nyquil to kick in. Hopefully I wasn’t gone long enough to readjust my sleep schedule. I’ll let you know later.

Right now, I think it is time for bed, to dream of hundreds of tightly packed people wearing masks who all don’t want to buy my product.

I'm heading out today for a Playstation II developers conference in Tokyo.

Why? Cybernet is an official middleware provider for the Playstation (our Massive Multiplayer Networking Technology).

Our flight was supposed to leave at 2:15 PM, with a layover in Minnesota. I decide to go online at 9:30 AM to check this out because I didn't think we had a layover.

There was no record of our flight on NWA.com.

None.

I called our company's travel agency, and they look into it. Apparently Northwest rescheduled all the flights on May 27th, and never bothered to tell anyone. No problem.

The new flight is now for 12:30 PM.

Problem.

Not everyone is at work, we still have to pack and get things ready. I still had some work to take care of before I left.

The good news is that the agency got us booked on a later flight, 3:30, which is a direct flight and arrives a roughly the same time as the earlier indirect one.

I love those fun panic situations.

Our return flight was changed also. We leave Tokyo at 4 PM on Thursday, and arrive in Detroit at 2:40 PM, on Thursday.

I love air travel!!

Passover means many things to many people, if those many people are Jewish.

To some, Passover is a time to get together with friends and remember the past.

To others, it is a time to play Hide the Matzo with your family.

And to some very few, it is a great excuse to add a splash of color in the form of lamb’s blood to your walls and doors.

For Elaine and me, Passover means our daycare center is closed, and we have to scramble to figure out how to work and take care of Marcus simultaneously.

A good friend is looking after him next week. Elaine’s Mom as his today. Yesterday, the Marcus Man was mine.

I took the day off and spent the day with him, and actually it was pretty good.

We started out going to Aerobics. The women there all wanted to see him, especially since I’m such a bad father that I don’t have any baby pictures in my wallet. He was very good during class. He never yelled and screamed. He got fussy only twice, and I held him while doing the step workout. Nothing like an extra 15 pound weight to make those legs burn! Everyone there thought he was adorable.

When I got home, I took a shower, and by then he was crying, so I fed him. After that he stayed up a bit and then actually went to sleep. I had time to get some work done (cleaning the den, something I’ve wanted to tackle now that my SCA Exchequer Domesday is done) and read my email. I also watched the 24 I recorded on tape. I’ll say it again – that is a great show. I hope they don’t screw up the ending.

Around Noon he was hungry again. I fed him before Elaine got home for lunch, and after feeding he wouldn’t stop crying. I think he was showing off for Elaine. I claimed that this meant that Marcus would rather be with his Mommy. Elaine claimed that obviously Daddy needed more practice.

Elaine left to go back to work, and immediately Marcus quieted down. He stayed awake for a while, and we had some good Father and Son time. He liked to wiggle around on the floor, and one of our favorite games was for me to pull him to a standing position by his arms, and he’d push his legs up to stand all the way. He smiled a lot when he did that. We also watched a very bad Larry Miller movie on HBO. I figured we’d be watching a lot of bad movies together, so we may as well start early.

I fed him again around 3 PM, and after crying for a half hour he fell asleep. I continued straightening up the house and finishing the den. It looks pretty good, with all of the books in order now.

About a half hour before Elaine came home he woke up and started crying. And crying. Couldn’t stop it until Elaine fed him.

All in all, it was a fun day.

For those who want to know the score:

9: number of ounces of breast milk fed to Marcus
22: number of times Marcus spit up on me
13: number of ounces of breast milk it seemed like Marcus spit up on me.
1.3 actually number of ounces probably spit on me
2.5: total number of hours Marcus slept
10: total number of minutes Chuck slept
2.1: number of hours Chuck had peace
1.5: number of hours Marcus cried all day.
20: number of minutes Marcus cried when Elaine wasn’t home
2: number of diapers changed
0: number of minutes I regretted spending with Marcus

WARNING: This blog entry is very gross and disgusting. I’m venting. You really don’t want to read this. Honest.

Back before marriage, when I was dating, I recall how careful I was to look my best. Now, I’m not the most handsome man in the world. Heck, I’m not the most handsome man in a two block radius. But, I took care to look good. I’d bathe, wipe my face, brush my teeth, that sort of thing.

My dates did that too. They were all very pretty, and both us were careful to not, shall we say, make odd bodily noises. Oh sure, we’d occasionally sneeze, or cough at times, but any other functions were hidden from the other person’s view. Heck, I don’t think any of my dates ever went to the bathroom except to fix their hair or something.

All that has changed since my son is born. Now, there are fluids everywhere.

He sneezes, and gobs of snot fly out of his nose on his face, his clothes, my hair, the cats, and the top of bookshelves.

He spits up. While I praise the fickle gods themselves that this is not projectile spit up, he still spits up all the time. And I mean all the time. He’s happily playing and then a stream of white goo flows.

I swear I have no idea how he lives. I’m afraid to bottle and measure his spit up, for fear that I’d discover that he spits up more than he swallows. Maybe he gets his energy from the sun’s rays, or he can convert noise to food (that would explain his crying all the time).

Then he poops and pees. His favorite time to pee is when he isn’t wearing a diaper. Elaine and I have gotten very adept at changing diapers. We almost never get hit now by projectile chunks or crossing streams.

When Marcus got sick at daycare, he brought it home to us. So while he’s sneezing, burping, farting, coughing, and crying (more liquid out of his eyes), Elaine and I have our own problems. Our noses are both running. I had a wonderful case of diarrhea. We had so much fluid coming out of every orifice that I raised our premium on our water damage insurance. Good grief, my wife is lactating: fluids are now coming out of my wife’s breasts. That never happened when we were dating!

I guess one thing that changes with parenting is that fluids just don’t bother you anymore. Nothing is disgusting. Picking up a used diaper is no big deal. Oh, the baby threw up on me, how nice.

It is amazing what we can adapt to.

Elaine and I got our first gift from Marcus on Friday. He brought it home from Day Care, and we couldn’t be prouder parents: he brought home his first cold.

We are ecstatic. We have been treasuring this gift, nurturing it, watching it grow. Both Elaine and I have shared this cold, and it is with us right now.

We stay up at night contemplating the cold. Marcus wakes us a lot now, reminding us of his present, and making sure we think about it for at least an hour.

I can honestly say that this is the best thing he’s brought home from daycare so far.

I’m looking forward to when he learns how to draw…

If you’ve been reading my blog, you know that I’m in sunny Florida at the moment. The day is done, and I’m sitting outside, by the pool, in nice warm weather (around 75 degrees, Fahrenheit this time).

I wasn’t very much looking forward to this day, as I was supposed to give my talk on our massive multiplayer game (MMPG) technology. Since this is towards the end of the conference, and not many people were at the talks I attended, I assumed that there wouldn’t be many people showing up to hear about my paper. I figured they had better things to do, like go to Disney World (3 miles away), or go swimming (1 block away), or just sleep late (a 2 foot stretch to the alarm).

Heck, I felt like joining them – at Disney World, or swimming, not in bed. But, I signed up to give the talk, and give it I would. The rest of the week went okay. With my Cybernet partner in crime down here, Jack (an F-16 pilot who is trying to learn to juggle), we had some good meetings. I also got us a potentially good medical connection, and learned a lot about the world of simulation, training, and bad hotel food, so was happy with my trip.

But I wasn’t looking forward to the talk. Many people are afraid of speaking in public. Well, many people aren’t me. I love doing it. I love being a court herald in the SCA. I like to street perform. I’m the guy in class who usually had a funny yet intelligent remark. I like giving presentations.

If I didn’t want to make heaping steaming gobs of money, I might have gone straight into teaching; I like talking in a classroom environment so much.

As I said, I didn’t expect anyone there. And I had to wear a suit. I find it annoying to wear a suit, but that is the subject of another blog.

So, I looked for the Paradise D room. Naturally, I see an arrow for Paradise A, B, and C, but no D. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that it wasn’t a broom closet, but instead a nice big room. Imagine my further surprise when the room was packed, standing room only.

And all for little old me…and two other people. I looked around. Except for the woman in the bright red dress, and the military whose uniform was as about as opposite you can get from being a bright red dress while still looking formal, and Jack who I’ve never seen not wearing a suit, I was the only one dressed up. The other two speakers weren’t even wearing a tie.

No problem. My talk was second, so I sat back and listed to the first presenter.

He had an amazing skill: he could talk with the microphone three inches from his mouth and still not be heard. He also does what most engineers and academics do when they give a talk – he read his slides. Every. Single. Word. I was about to point out to Jack how boring that was, but I didn’t want to wake him.

My turn.

At work I had set up my machine so that I can have a second monitor next to me. This is great because I have more space to do computer work, which is a very good thing.

However, that also meant that, unknown until I tried to start my talk, that PowerPoint wouldn’t go into presentation mode. It thought it was in presentation mode, but it wouldn’t, well, present.

After two minutes I couldn’t quickly figure out how to remove the two screen feature, so I dragged my raw presentation, in edit mode, over to the other screen, and presented from there. Everyone said they could read it fine, so I began.

I asked, in a non-microphoned booming voice, if everyone could hear me. They could. I introduced myself, my company, and the title of my talk. Then I continued:

“There are two main points I want everyone to come away with from my presentation. The first, illustrated by the computer problems I’m having, is this: power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.”

They laughed. A lot. They had already had a half a day of boring talks, and they were thirsty for entertainment. Any sort of entertainment.

They were mine.

A friend of mine has tried to convince me that anytime I give a talk, I should wear a loud tie, smoke a huge smelly cigar, and tell a very bad joke.

The joke part is a good idea, and it did work.

I gave my talk.

I didn’t read my slides, I summarized them.

I engaged the audience, asking them questions and drawing them into the topic at hand.

I made more witty comments that got very good laughs. I was expressive and excited about my technology, and people were awake.

I resisted the urge to juggle, but that probably would have gone over well too.

At the end of the talk, I had at least 20 questions from the crowd, and more were asked. I love it when they ask questions – it means they were paying attention. They were quite good questions, in fact, and provided me with more entertaining opportunities. We ran out of time because it was the next speaker’s turn.

To me, giving a talk is like doing an improvisation show, and I love doing improv.

After the talk, a few people asked for my card, and I got theirs. After that session, Jack and I talked to a bunch more people, and two wanted to see Jack’s Cybernet overview presentation. I even talked to one of our competitors there.

This talk turned out great, and was a nice finish to the trip.

Unfortunately, I need to talk about the third speaker. He was okay. Not a great presenter, but that wasn’t the problem. He was talking about MMPG too, something his company did and is going to give away for free. He was making comparisons to what was already out there, and saying how great his system was.

The problem was this: he was totally wrong.

Halfway through I couldn’t hold back. I raised my hand and asked him what systems he was comparing his too, because the ones I’ve seen didn’t have the problems he mentioned. Did he do this comparison years ago? No…it was a few months ago, but he assured me he did the tests himself.

Okay. I was very confused. Did I not understand the industry? Is our technology that bad? I wasn’t understanding how his software was any different than what we had four years ago (and what we could do seemed far better than what he has now). I didn’t want to ask any more questions, however, since my talk was before his, and it would probably look bad. I shouldn’t have worried.

At the end of his presentation he asked if there were any questions. The gate was opened. The wolves were released, and blood was in the air.

About thirty people questioned his results, his experiments, his data, his facts, and his system. The called him on a lot of factual errors, and he could only answer a quarter of the questions thrown at him. It was clear to everyone in the room that this person didn’t know what he was talking about.

He looked like Natalie probably did after she hit that dear. He was getting all white, sweating a lot, and hardly moving. I didn’t ask anything, and it was really scary up there. Two of his colleagues tried to come to his aid, but their answers were even worse.

I spoke to some of the people after the talk, and they confirmed to me that yes, his system was bogus, and everyone in the room knew he didn’t understand the industry. Towards the end they were giving him advice on how to learn more about what was going on.

That third presenter was so quick to put down every other company’s commercial products, he didn’t realize that he really around half a decade behind industry standards.

I don’t think a loud tie, a smelly cigar, or a few bad jokes would have helped him.