Hey, I'm back. Took off last Thursday (6/30) for some family fourth-of-July stuff. My brother's kid was celebrating his 5th birthday, so we drove the 12 hours to Nashville for birthday party doings and to meet up with relatives. Maggie loves her cousin in a powerful way, and my bro's got a pool, so Maggie had a really big time. We did a couple of cookouts and generally had a good time.

On the "you can pick your friends but you can't pick your family front", I learned from my folks that our society is in decline, apparently due to the influence of the Chinese, gays, liberals, and Mexicans. I didn't bother arguing with 'em, because there's no point --if you know that someone's opinion cannot be swayed, any attempts to do so are just wasted words.

. . .but my dad did drive halfway across town twice to help me get a wheel bearing replaced in the Hyundai so that we wouldn't end up stranded on I-30 between Memphis and Little Rock (which is not a good place to be stranded), so it's hard to hold a grudge against 'em. The potentially expensive wheel bearing replacement was 102% free, despite the car being four years old.

Hyundai's warranty program fills me with much love.

Shelly tripped on a curb during our march to the fireworks field, and she hyper-extended her elbow pretty badly. Now that we're home, she headed over to the doc to get checked out.

Since babysitting was plentiful over the weekend, Shelly and I saw War of the Worlds together. We enjoyed the movie. It rather reminded me of Independence Day, and the differences can be described by the following equation:

War of the Worlds + Ernest Goes To Camp = Independence Day

In other words, the aliens weren't defeated by Jeff Goldblum writing a mothership-crashing computer virus using his Apple PowerBook(tm) while flying in an alien scoutship piloted by Will Smith.

[even ten years later, John involuntarily shudders at the bottomless douchebaggitude of that intellect-insulting plot-device]



Bulldozer's about done, save for the music. I now need to put together some server stuff so that folks like you can write Bulldozer levels for me online. I've currently got 180 levels from the original three games, but I'd like to have 120 more originals.

And yeah, I'll make it worth your while.