So, I actually haven’t posted a person update since before my birthday, which was nice by the way, thanks for asking. We took everyone out to my favorite Chinese place and treated ourselves. My grill was my big present and my wife got me all sorts of grill accessories to go along with it, including a really nice “Grill Ninja” apron. Apparently I’m messy AND sneaky. lol.

A couple days later my parents came to town for Christmas. They wanted to spend some time with their new grand daughter. She was a little shy at first, but she warmed up to them in no time. She was sleeping on Grandpa’s shoulder by that afternoon. I think talking to them via web video helped a lot. She knew their voices right away. We had a fairly quite Christmas on the whole. Went to church, had a nice Christmas lunch/dinner (linner?) with the whole family. We spent the rest of the week just taking it easy and playing tour guide to my folks. Everyone was also feeling a little under the weather as well. By the end of the week we were all coughing and sniffling.

My wife got me a really nice set of Turtle Beach gaming headphones and the baseball cards I mentioned in my last post. My brother and I made extensive use of them playing Xbox after the kiddo went to bed. The nice thing is that they’re USB powered so I can use them on the PC as well.

I also took advantage of the crazy holiday sale that Steam had going on and stocked up on pretty much everything I had either missed out on, or was waiting to go on sale. I picked up Bastion, Batman: Arkham City, Bulletstorm, Defense Grid, Deus Ex, Dungeon Defenders, and Orcs Must Die. I think the most expensive one was Batman at $15. Everything else was under $10. The indie games were under $2 a piece. That’s a whole lot of gaming for next to nothing. That was kind of my Christmas present to myself. I had given up on Call of Duty and Battlefield 3 on the consoles. I just can’t find the time to really get deep into such mediocre games. I fire them up and I’m just done with them 20 minutes later. Something like Bastion however, I can play that for quite a while.

If only I could figure out a way to play it on my Mac, I’d never get any work done, lol.

2011 was quite the year. To steal a line, having a baby changes everything. It’s no joke. Every day I want to be home to play with her and every morning I feel like a terrible person when I go to work. She’s just a perfect joy and I love her so much.

2011 was also the year my brother came to live with us. I won’t say it’s been easy, I’ve had to re-adjust my expectations a couple times. I guess it’s just too much to ask for someone else to pitch in as much as I do myself, and I understand that. He has been a great help with the baby and babysits whenever we need him too. So that’s appreciated.

Work is kind of all over the place. Everyone is concerned with layoffs in this economy and I can’t say I’m immune to it. Realistically, my position is fairly secure, and I’m always busy, but that thought is always in the back of your mind. The work is good though, and at least it’s interesting and keeps me on my toes. I’ve always done design work, but never this much developing, so I’ve learned a lot this year, especially about the server side of things. I think I pretty much walked my entire IT department through a MySQL deployment and a WordPress set up. They’re all Windows guys and had never touched any of it. Yeah me.

Everything else is going pretty well. Everyone is happy and healthy and that’s about all I asked for this year. The Good Lord has blessed with me with a wonderful family and I’m very thankful.

I hope each and every one of you had a good year, had a great holiday season, and has an even better 2012… you know, until the world ends… on my birthday. Who’s up for an “End of the World” party this year???

Take care,
Matt out