Just a couple days ago, it dawned on me that I didn't need to buy the starter kit to get on Xbox Live - since I have DSL, all I needed was to hook it up, and use the free 2 month trial included with Halo 2. So I did just that, and have joined the ranks of Xbox Live.

So, I figured I'd ask if there was anyone else out there amongst my Slashdot fans who are Xbox live players, so I can find some more people to play alongside in the future and hunt down for games.

Right now, I'm only playing Halo 2 on Live, but I've also got Crimson Skies that I can pop in.

I just wanted to say that I am very excited - my birthday this year is going to be most wonderful. I just bought tickets to the Dead Can Dance show at The Paramount here in Seattle, which is on my birthday!

I never thought I'd get the chance to see them live, but the reunion tour they're doing has given me the chance! I've got Toward the Within, and watched the DVD in the box set, and I can tell the energy live is amazing - and I'll get to experience it firsthand!

The following information was passed on to me via a GLBT mailing list that I was on, and it's very distressing. It makes me worry about the direction this country is headed under the current administration.

From: Reid Vanderburgh < mailto:ReidPDX@toast.net
<mailto:reidpdx@toast.net>
To: ReidPDX@toast.net
Sent: Friday, February 11, 2005 6:23 PM
Subject: Who's next?
 
Hello colleagues and friends,
 
Recently, I was asked to help present a workshop on suicide prevention among GLBT individuals, at the third in a series of five regional conferences on suicide prevention in the U.S. This particular conference covers Public Health Regions 9 and 10 (basically, the entire west coast). Following is a statement my co-presenters and I have prepared outlining recent chilling events surrounding our workshop. One interesting thing to note - the two previous conferences, one in New Orleans and the other in Denver, contained workshops very similar to ours and were not a problem. The difference? Both were held PRIOR to the last election. We give permission to forward this to whoever you believe needs to read it:
 
Statement of Concern and Protest
 
Government funders within the Bush Administration at SAMHSA (Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration) notified the Suicide Prevention Resource Center (SPRC) that SAMHSA Administrator, Charles Curie, would not be allowed to attend a SPRC regional conference on suicide prevention if conference organizers went forward with a workshop title that included the words "gay", "lesbian", "bisexual", and "transgender". The conference is scheduled to take place in Portland, Oregon, February 28-March 2. The original title of the workshop was "Suicide Prevention Among Gays, Lesbians, Bisexuals, and Transgender Individuals."
 
On January 31, Lloyd Potter, SPRC Center Director, contacted workshop presenters Ron Bloodworth, Joyce Liljeholm and Reid Vanderburgh and requested that we come up with alternative wording for the workshop so that the words "gay", "lesbian", "bisexual", or "transgender" did not appear in the workshop title or descriptor.
 
We worked with SPRC to create alternative wording so that the workshop could continue to be offered but we expressed deep concern about government intrusion to remove any reference to gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender people in the workshop title and descriptor. After agreeing to the title "Suicide Prevention in Vulnerable Populations", we were told that the new title would be acceptable to SAMHSA and that we could use the term "sexual orientation" in the workshop descriptor but that the term "gender identity" would "not fly with SAMHSA".
 
We are still planning to offer the workshop as originally planned even though the workshop title and descriptor had to be changed but we will not be quiet about the heavy handed efforts of SAMSHA to render gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender people invisible. The action of our government in this regard is the very reason a workshop on suicide prevention with gay, lesbian, bisexual, and/or transgender individuals is needed. How ironic! The discriminatory and intimidating actions of SAMHSA and the Bush Administration should not go unchallenged and should be of concern to all Americans.
 
It's important to note that Oregon Senator Gordon Smith is scheduled to attend the conference as part of his support for suicide prevention efforts in the U.S. We urge you to use the attached contact information to express your concern to SAMHSA Administrator Charles Curie, Secretary of Health and Human Services, Mike Leavitt, Oregon Senator Gordon Smith, and other members of Congress from your state that represents you.
 
Thank you for your concern and support.
 
Ron Bloodworth, MA, LPC, Portland, OR
Joyce Liljeholm, MEd, Portland, OR
Reid Vanderburgh, MA, Portland, OR
 
Contact Information for Government Officials:
 
Charles Curie
Office of the Administrator
SAMHSA
Rockville, MD 20850
Tel: 240-276-2000
charles.curie@samhsa.hhs.gov
 
Mike Leavitt
Secretary of Health and Human Services 200 Independence Ave. SW
Washington, D.D. 20201
Tel: 202-690-7000
Fax: 202-690-7203
 
Senator Gordon Smith
404 Russell Bldg
Washington, D.C. 20510-3704
Tel: 202-224-3753
Fax: 202-228-3997
http://gsmith.senate.gov/webform.htm
 
President George W. Bush
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Ave. NW
Washington, DC 20500
Comments: 202-456-1111
Switchboard: 202-456-1414
president@whitehouse.gov
 
Reid Vanderburgh, MA
Holistic Psychotherapy
1020 SW Taylor, Suite 630
Portland, Oregon 97205
(503) 341-7001
www.transtherapist.com

It's hard to believe it was only three weeks ago that I threw my first 700 series. And that I did it again last night, this time a 741.

246, 216, then a 279! I left a 10 pin in the seventh frame on a beautiful shot. Everything else was a strike. It's so frustrating to be so close to a perfect game, yet so far away. Oh well, I know I'll do it eventually. I just set a new personal high game and high series, so I can't really complain. I also took over high average in the league, which I'm enjoying a lot. :)

"I just read about Ashlee in us weekly. Those guys at the football game were total jerks."

*sigh*

Well, a couple people told me they thought I'd do it this season. I wasn't sure, especially since I choked the last couple times I was close, but last night finally did it!

After the 2nd game, I just kept trying to focus on one frame at a time, not even looking at my score. Just do what had been working. When I got my first strike in the tenth, I got some applause from others that made me think I had done it then, but I just stayed focused, and struck out. Only then did I look at my score, and realized that I finally did it! Now the next one should be easier. I hope.

..and getting an XBox. Yes, really.

My partner and I were staying at a friends' house for the weekend to watch their dogs while they were out of town. They have an XBox, and KOTOR. I'd seen some of it before, and felt like trying it. Well, I ended up playing for most of the weekend. Played long enough to have my character become a Jedi, and start to get to what appears to be the real meat of the game (the Star Forge and all that).

That was plenty long enough to realize I really like the game, and I'm going to want to finish it, and probably the second one also. Which means I need an XBox.

Well, at least I can get the games cheaper at the company store...

Now, to just figure out where to put it...

It's amazing what a change on your outlook just changing your hair color can have.

I did the purple and black for fun. It wasn't really on a whim, since I'd been thinking about it for a while, but it is a pretty radical change. It's not something that you see a lot of - except for a few neighborhoods in some cities (such as Capitol Hill in Seattle). So it stands out, and for someone who has rarely done anything to stand out, it has significant effects.

I can't remember having a stranger comment on my hair for a long time - now I'm getting used to it. The cashier at the supermarket, coworkers I've never talked to, waitresses in restaurants, etc. I see even more people visibly looking at me and my hair. It draws attention, and I was never really one that wanted much attention like that. But I'm really enjoying it.

It's really freeing, in some ways. It's like I've crossed a line by going with an 'outrageous' hair color, and it's somehow OK to be a little more unique with other things. I just replaced a simple Old Navy coat with a dark green, knee-length coat with a collar and cuffs fringed with long fuzzy-furry stuff (I don't know what it's called) - a coat I would have liked before, but never bought because it does stand out. Now I love the fact that it does.

And it's even more freeing when I'm thinking about what to do with the color next. I like it as it is, but I think I want to go with more color. I'm not yet sure how best to do things while the black grows out, but I'm going to keep going with bright colors, and later on even going multi-color (such as like the front one color, the back another, and the rest something inbetween). It's like stuff that would have been 'too wild' for me before is now something I can do.

An interesting side note - about the same time I colored my hair back, I started finding some new music liked thanks to Audioscrobber and Last.fm. This new music, much of it is rather dark, and some of it falls into the 'goth' category, such as Switchblade Symphony. I didn't intend for it to happen, it just occured that I colored my hair in a manner that some consider 'goth', at the same time as finding music that falls into that category. Maybe there's just something about black hair dye that affects the brain in that manner? :)

Look what I did!

Why? Cause I can.

First, I have GMail invites if anyone wants one and hasn't already got one - not like they're in short supply anymore.

Second, I have to say that AudioScrobbler is actually pretty darn cool. It's interesting to see the tracking of what I've been listening to, and how it's starting to match me up with people.

I still don't take the recommendations too seriously yet, since even 800 or so songs isn't enough to really figure out my listening patterns - after all, I currently have 2300 songs on my computer. I'll wait a couple more weeks before starting to really look at what's being recommended.

BTW, if anyone cares, here's my profile.

Life is strange...

I recently had a strange nostalgia for some of the old BBS doors I used to play. I did some looking around to see what I could download for the heck of it. Eventually, I found the old Dungeons and Dragons multiplayer door game, which was like a proto-MUD I suppose. I downloaded it, tried briefly to get it working, which I couldn't yet because I don't know how to load ANSI.SYS into Win2K or command prompts or such, and gave up. Somehow, I decided to play around with some MUD software, remembering the fun of creating a world, and just as I was about to get it running, decided it likely wasn't worth it just creating by myself.

So I decided to do something I never really did before. Play on a MUD.

When I say "never really did before", I don't mean I never touched one. I spent a few hours checking them out back in college. I even played around on a MUSH that some college friends got up and running. But never that much. I think I logged on to MUDs and the like only during the space of a single month, never again to do so.

Until last week. The urge didn't go away, so I did some web searching to see what was out there.

And ended up at Achaea. The web site really grabbed me, the whole mythology that has been developed, the emphasis on role-playing (no true in-game OOC communication channels or locations), and the fact that it looks like just about everything in the game is player run. So I decided to try it.

And I think I'm hooked. Already. And it's really odd, since I've never done this sort of thing before for any real length of time.

I'm already worried how I can moderate my time spent on there. I've already been up too late a few nights. I hope I don't end up like some other MUDders, screwing up my real life due to playing a game too much. But I'm not stopping, it's so much fun...

They're passing the things out like crazy now! I got 6 on Monday, and used them up over the next couple days. I logged in this morning to find I have 6 more. I gave out two, but I'm running short of people to invite!

So, if there's anyone out there reading this who doesn't have one yet and wants one, let me know and you'll get one as long as I have invites left.

This morning, I placed my new personalized license plates on my car. So, what did I go with? The most popular choice back when I did the poll, of course!

I now have Washington plates with "CH1X0R" on them! I'll try and get some pics taken and placed somewhere for everyone to see soon!

So much cooler than "120 SGZ"...

I know I had mentioned in the past after I started working at Microsoft that I couldn't really say what I was working on, other than that it was part of Visual Studio. The project was being kept quiet at the time.

Well, that has come to an end. Today, at the Tech Ed conference in San Diego, they are announcing what I've been part of, and I figured that maybe a few of my journal readers (if there are any left, as I've been writing in it so infrequently the last few months) might still be curious, and I'd finally be able to tell people.

I've been working on the Visual Studio 2005 Team System - it's a set of tools that will be shipped as part of the Enterprise Edition of Visual Studio, and adds a number of new integrated tools to handle the development process from architecting a system down to helping test it. (eWeek Article)

The system includes a new source code tracking system to replace that thing called 'SourceSafe' - which my own experience at my previous job had taught me was worse than the freely-available and rather decent CVS. While I haven't had the chance to work with the new source code system, I've seen demos, and it looks fairly impressive. Not quite Clearcase, but then again, Clearcase has been around quite a while.

There's also a bug/work item tracking system, a system for semi-automatically creating unit tests that exist as part of the project, with code coverage and such built in, and a number of other things that I'm not that familiar with.

I'm sorry if I sound to anyone like I'm trying to sell them on this, but I am actually excited about it. I spent nearly 7 years working in an environment where we had all these tools for requirements tracking, defect tracking, source code control, testing, and all of them were independent tools without any communication with each other, and all this work and these obnoxious procedures had to be created and followed to keep things in sync. The thought of a system that integrates them, where you can just easily look up a bug and click to see the code changes that were checked in to fix that bug, and then see which tests failed due to that bug and be able to just bring them up and re-run them, well, it's a big deal. It's something I would have liked to have before.

So, where exactly have I been working? I've been helping to test the integration infrastructure - the web services that help keep all the tools properly communicating with each other. It's been quite the learning experience - learning about web services, about IIS, especially configuring it through scripts (and BTW, I SO miss UNIX shell scripts), about SQL Server (and the new SQL Server 'Yukon' is definitely a big improvement over SQL Server 2000, I must say, having had to work with both of them) and plenty of other things.

It's been so much fun working on this - more fun than I had in 7 years at Motorola. And I really hope people find this new set of tools useful.

(BTW, I'm not certain if I need to include this, but just to be on the safe side...

Disclaimer: This posting is provided "AS IS" with no warranties, and confers no rights.)

Well, Google's Gmail is in beta, and it looks like the demand for them is already pretty high. How can I tell? Well, some enterprising person
has created Gmail Swap, a site for the sole purpose of giving those of us who want a Gmail account a place to tell people what we'd be willing
to give to get a Gmail account, and those who have Gmail and the ability to invite others can get something in return for using that invite.

It seems to be quite popular already - there are a lot of swap offers, from something as simple as making someone happy, to money, movies,
and even a week in Maui!! It looks like it's getting harder and harder to offer enough to get someone to swap with you - after all, odds are
someone else will offer something more interesting. I think my swap offer is already well buried, never to be seen again.

The most common swap offer I see on there? Orkut invites in return for a Gmail account. I've also seen a few offers of Metafilter accounts
on there - looks like they're also highly desired, as they've had signups closed for a long time, with no indication of opening them up in sight.
(Phooey, because I'd like an account there too...)

Oh well, I'll stick to my status as a near-nobody, since they let any old idiot on to Slashdot, after all... (and there are plenty around here to prove that.)