I’ve posted a pile of stuff to celebrate Christmas and the New Year. Leading it off is The 2000 Edition of The McMains Family Christmas Letter. If you’re just joining us, that’s a good place to get up to speed on the last year of goings-on around here. I’ve also posted several small photo galleries, including a Trinity Baptist Church Reunion, Christmas Morning, and Varied Holiday Fun. There were, unfortunately, two events for which I didn’t have the camera along: Christmas with Dad McMains, Lana, and Meara, and a reunion of “The Righteous Dudes”, a title our immodest (and inaccurate) group of four good friends gave ourselves in high school. It was great to get together with those guys again, as we hadn’t all been together for six years.

In the midst of the cold weather, here’s a bit of Texas summer beauty. This is a patch of prickly pear out near Enchanted Rock State Park. Prickly Pear cactus is some of my favorite distinctly Texan flora, and I plan to cultivate some in my cactus garden once I get around to creating it.

No, this site hasn’t been abandoned. It’s just that there are a lot of dear people in the Real World™ that I just haven’t seen enough of lately, and we’re using the time off work to good advantage. I hope that your holidays are bringing you all similar joys.

I’ve got this year’s Christmas Letter in the works, so don’t fret: there will be something new to read soon. And for you visual learners, the camera is crammed. I’ll post those shortly as well. Until then, get out and enjoy the sunshine and the company of good friends and family.

Know programming? Know databases? Want to be able to order me to get you coffee every morning? Then come be my boss!

We’re trying to get someone in as a team lead to replace Tim Keating, who’s moving over to QA, but have been having a tough time finding someone who fits the bill. We need someone with strong leadership skills, good object-oriented programming, and a good understanding of SQL databases. It’s a great excuse to get to Austin if you have any interest in this town, and is a great place to work, especially if you like beer.

The posting on Monster.com is here, or better yet, send me your resume and I’ll be sure it gets to the right person. They’re offering a pretty hefty finder’s fee for this position as well, so if I refer you, I’ll gladly split the fee with you.

David Dark asked:

does your mention of tom baker in the d&D review imply that you’ve a fondness for doctor who in your heart somewhere? my brother and i are batty bout it.

Oh, heavens yes.

Some of my fond childhood memories center around late-night TV sci-fi with Dad McMains. Dr. Who was one of our staples, as were classic Star Trek and Twilight Zone, as well as an avid viewing of Forbidden Planet whenever the networks broadcast it late at night.

But Dr. Who is special. And Tom Baker was certainly the definitive Dr. Who in our experience. Even now, when I’m messing around with various synthesizers, the Dr. Who theme is one of the first things I try on it — the super-cool version with the bridge in the middle that goes into the relative major key for about 20 bars.

In fact, now that you’ve got me thinking about it, I may have to try to put together a version on the new Korg. 🙂

Unfortunately, I don’t have much access to the good Doctor these days. We stopped watching TV about 5 years ago, and Dr. Who and the Simpsons are two of the few things I miss. I haven’t found a good place to rent episodes yet, though I’m excited by the occassional rumors of a movie in the works. Hope springs eternal…

Sean

This Friday, we rendezvoused with Dad McMains, Lana, and Meara to celebrate Meara’s 17th birthday. On the way down, Liam decided to celebrate the occassion in his own inimitable fashion: he stuck a blow-pop in his hair. By the time he got around to alerting us, it was pretty inextricably entwined, and Kathy had to resort to milk and saliva to free it from his head.

Emily: Laughs uproariously
Kathy: “Em, please don’t laugh. It’s not funny!”
Sean: Laughs quietly
Emily: “Daddy, do you think it’s funny?”
Sean: “Yes, but only when your mom’s not listening.”

Needless to say, Liam was sporting an impressive Kramer-esque do for the rest of the evening.

We arrived at the theater 5 minutes before the start of The Emporer’s New Groove. The kids enjoyed it thoroughly. The adults had a good time for the most part as well. David Spade was very well-cast as the egocentric emporer who gets turned into a Llama. (I was speculating that if the same happened to our boy, we’d have to start calling him “Lliam.”) We then retired to The Alamo Cafe, home of the best tortillas in the free world. When the wait staff was alerted to Meara’s birthday, they sang to her while forcing her to stand on her chair and perform the haunting and beautiful Danza de la sal y la pimienta. Finally with tired kids and tireder parents, we returned home, again reminded how nice it is to be closer to family here so that we can be a part of these special times.

One of the principal goals of maintaining this site has been to help me and my family to keep in touch with the various scattered people who are dear to us. Yesterday I was given some evidence of success when one of my old college roommates, Glenn Gonzalez, left a message on the site accusing us of having the reproductive ability of rabbits. Glenn and I did pretty well keeping in touch after school for several years, but haven’t been really good about maintaining the lines of communication over the last 24 months, so it was really good to hear from him and to renew that correspondence. Thanks for stopping by, Glenn!

Once in a great while, Texas reminds us that we’re not quite far enough south to leave the plants out all the time. Right now we’re under a winter weather advisory, since the temperature dropped to 26 degrees last night while it rained vigorously for hours. We lost power for a while during the night, and found the roads ice-coated this morning. The kids have been romping around outside, enjoying the novelty of seeing daddy’s car encased in a crystalline tomb which I’m happy not to chop through in favor of a work-at-home day. Of course, the network at the office is currently down, and since the building sits on top of a hill, I don’t anticipate it getting fixed anytime really soon. I’ll just sit and nurse my hot Earl Grey and see what transpires.

The word comes from on high that there is going to be a movie version of Dungeons & Dragons. Gamers, geeks, and closet role players worldwide rejoice. Further, the movie has taken 10 years to make, and one can therefore safely assume that it will be an epic masterpiece, right?

Oh, you poor deluded innocent. My team at work went to see this film last Friday, and it was an actively painful experience, especially for anyone with any affection at all for the source material. There was only a single character who was well-acted — a remarkable statistic considering that the cast included the likes of Jeremy Irons and Tom Baker. The CGI creatures, with the possible exception of the dragons, were nowhere near as realistically rendered or imbued with the subtle nuance of personality as anything you’d see in Quake. And the script…oh, the script…what evil have we as a race done to deserve that script?

I was initially going to suggest waiting until it comes out on video to see it, but that’s too generous. Then I was going to suggest waiting until it’s broadcast so that you don’t have to blow the 99 cents at Hastings, but that’s still giving it too much credit. So, my official viewing advice is this:

Wait until you’re over at a friends house, and he’s already unwittingly rented the movie at Blockbuster’s inflated rates and will be actively losing money if you don’t sit down and watch it with him. Then, as he leans over to put the movie in the VCR, hit him over the head rendering him unconcious. Pull out your wallet and leave $3 on his prostrate form as compensation for the rental fee, and return the movie immediately, preferably while wearing rubber gloves, or if you’re a true philanthopist, burn it, making sure there are no small children downwind from the toxic fumes, and eat the fee from Blockbuster.

You’ll be glad you did.

The cold is finally abating here, but I got a bit of photographic evidence so as to convince Kathy’s New York relatives that we’re not totally deprived of cold weather here.

We left our hose dripping a bit, which apparently generated enough moisture in the air for some rather fantastic shapes to grow from the grass. You can see the details much better in the full sized version. (Click the small version displayed here to get to it.)