My wife and I went to Target in Aliso Viejo this evening to purchase rechargeable batteries for our daughter's swing. We waited in line for awhile and eventually noticed the couple in front of us was swiping various credit cards for a purchase only to have all their cards declined. Finally, they asked the cashier if he can enter one of their credit card numbers into the cash register to have it accepted. He acknowledged this can be done only if they provide an ID. Amusingly, the blonde lady supplied her supposed driver's license which depicted an Asian. Yes, the woman on the driver's license was an Asian. At this point the cashier advised us to switch to another cash register.

If I did not know any better, I suspect that the couple were attempting to purchase approximately 2-3 carts full of items with stolen or lost credit cards. If you are going to attempt to use stolen credit cards and identification, make sure that the picture resembles you.

I was watching my wife play The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past on the Nintendo Wii when out of nowhere our daughter, Zefie, made the most random sound yet. She somehow made a sound that resembled water dripping into a metal pot in the sink. Needless to say, after hearing this sound we were cracking up for the next few minutes.

Zefie also decided tonight that diapers are grossly overrated and unnecessary, thus she does not need to wear them. Apparently, Zefie decided that turning her crib into yellow swimming pool would be much more interesting than a mere bed. No diving into the pool please!

Last Friday, the NICU at the Saddleback Memorial hospital left a message on my wife’s cell phone that our daughter, Zefie, was ready to be discharged. The revelation was a bit surprising considering that she was only being bottle-fed for six out of eight meals to conserve energy since the NICU did not feel she was ready to advance to being bottle-fed for every meal. Since I was at work, I pushed the QA (Quality Assurance) department to sign-off on the latest build of an internal bug-tracking tool I develop. Once I obtained approval close to noon, the binaries were compiled along with the database schema and Stored Procedure update script, wrote an e-mail to a companion department to deploy the build, and then headed out for the remainder of the day and following week to continue paternity leave.

My wife and I arrived at the NICU early in the afternoon to sign the discharge papers and finally bring our daughter home for the first time. We spent a solid few hours at the NICU where we watched a child safety seat video, demonstrated CPR on a baby dummy to the nursing staff, and practiced parenting duties such as changing diapers and bottle-feeding. At around five o’ clock, my wife and daughter were escorted to the car in a wheelchair, thus ending our ordeal of driving to the hospital up to a few times a day for an hour or two at a time to visit our daughter.

The first night was definitely an exhausting and stressful experience as we repeatedly checked on the baby every ten to fifteen minutes wondering if the baby was still breathing since she was quiet – a bit too quiet. Nearly a week later and I miss sleep already as our daughter frequently awakes throughout the night for diaper changes, feedings, and comfort out of sheer boredom. Fortunately, I am on paternity leave this week to assist my wife with taking care of our daughter. After the first dozen awakenings throughout the night, baby care becomes second nature as one becomes accustomed to waking up in semi-daze performing parental duties and falling back asleep with little recollection.

Childbirth and caring for a baby is not the euphoric experience some potential mothers might envision. However, there is much joy and satisfaction to watching your own child reach each developmental milestone. Despite the sleepless nights where the baby may desire – no, demand – hours of attention at ungodly hours, it brings a smile to one’s face when you watch your baby entertained by your own goofy behavior such as holding her in the air and flying her around the house making airplane noises with your mouth; or the indescribable emotion of when your baby snuggles against your chest and falls asleep.

While being a first time parent is not a cakewalk by any stretch of the imagination, it is one I would not trade anything in the world for.

In a strange turn of events, I ended up being able to celebrate Father's Day this year. On Sunday, I was playing Metal Gear Solid 4 when my wife quickly scurried into the bathroom. Since I was in the middle of a boss battle, I thought nothing of this until she yelled something was wrong. I glanced over and notice a trail of blood leading into the bathroom and we immediately went to the hospital. Shortly after we arrived at the hospital, the doctors recommended and performed an emergency c-section since the placenta was detaching from my wife's uterus. Our daughter, Zefie, was born at 9:20 PM PDT on Father's Day with fatherhood hitting me like a sack of bricks.

My wife and I are still at the hospital since she has not been discharged yet, and our daughter will likely remain at the NICU until July 27th since she is premature. The hospital offers free wireless access, so I will be online throughout the week using my laptop.

Two months ago, I unfortunately received a letter and traffic citation in the mail relating to the car accident on February 18th. Apparently, the other party lied and supplied so-called witnesses that claimed that I blatantly sped and ran a red light. The Orange County Sheriff’s department cited me for failing to yield right-of-way in the intersection and felt that the other party was legally in the intersection. After obtaining the report and spending numerous hours putting together my defense, I decided to opt to contest the traffic citation in court in a trial. Shortly after the car accident, I discovered I accidentally obtained absolute proof of what exactly happened during the accident. Thus, I am the only person who can prove who is actually at fault and what actually happened. After combing over the police report with a fine-tooth comb, I detailed numerous factual errors and inconsistencies. Additionally, the Orange County Sheriff’s department never determined several important factors include speed of either vehicle. So, in April, I went to the Harbor Justice Center in Laguna Hills, requested to contest the citation in trial, and paid bail.

Last Tuesday, my wife and I went to the Harbor Justice Center in Laguna Hills to attend trial for the traffic citation. We waited outside the courtroom doors until they opened about ten minutes late. Once the doors opened, the bailiff had everybody enter the court with law enforcement on the left-side, and defendants and witnesses seated on the right-side in the jury area. The judge read off the names of each defendant, officer, and witness to determine who was present in the courtroom. After reading the names, I waited in the jury area as there were four other cases before mine. Three of the defendants were likely banking that the officer would fail to show but opted for traffic school when the officer did show. The fourth defendant attempted to contest the traffic citation, but ultimately failed when the judge ruled he was guilty.

Finally, the judge called my name and summoned me to the defendant's table. The officer took a seat at the plaintiff's table and summoned numerous witnesses into the seats behind him to testify against me. The judge has the prosecution start their case in which the citing officer drew a diagram of the intersection onto a chalkboard and describe his version of events. The judge asked me if I agreed and I made some corrections as they were going to be important later in my defense. Afterwards, each witness was summoned to testify against me. After a witness testified, I was allowed an opportunity to cross-examine the witness where I attempted to exploit the witness’ inconsistencies and flaws in their testimony. After all the witnesses were summoned, the judge finally paused for a second and informed the prosecution that they have no credible witnesses (including the other party). The judge further elaborated that since this is a criminal trial, he is not convinced I might be guilty based upon the prosecution’s evidence and witnesses, and thus, there is no reason for the trial to continue. The judge finally ruled that I was not guilty and banged his gavel. Finally, each party, the witnesses, and the citing officer left the courtroom, and then the citing officer held a debriefing where he thanked the witnesses for their testimony and not to be discouraged because justice did not prevail. I joined in the crowd and eventually the officer noticed my presence, so he pulled me aside to have a private discussion about how I should consider myself lucky to have won the case. I informed him that I had considerable evidence to prove my innocent should the trial have proceeded any further. I explained that I had concrete proof the other party and witnesses were lying under oath including elaborating on the evidence I had (I brought a binder with documents and a notebook computer in the courtroom for a reason). The court clerk called my name, so I left the conversation to receive a document detailing the verdict and results from the clerk.

Fortunately, I never revealed to the other party or witnesses what evidence I have against everybody. I cannot reveal the evidence online since the other party, a lawyer, or an insurance company might find this website. However, all in all, the pendulum has swung in my favor.

Today, my wife is officially one year older. Over the course of the weekend, I made my wife an ice cream cake for her birthday. The cake part is fudge brownie, the ice cream is chocolate fudge brownie, and there is whipped vanilla frosting on top. This afternoon, we went to Cheesecake Factory at the Irvine Spectrum to eat lunch, and then returned home to go swimming since it has been a warm weekend in Southern California. It was a good, if not delicious, day indeed.

For your viewing pleasure, I present a slice of cake.

Sometimes life can be a bit of a mixed bag. On one hand, this was a three-day weekend because of President's Day. Ah! -- the joys of an extra day off of work! However, sometimes unexpected things can happen to dampen the mood. In the end, one must look to the positive aspects to continue on through life.

My wife and I ate lunch out in Aliso Viejo. I ordered a house special chicken lunch special from Pick-up Stix while my wife ordered chicken alfredo from Pasta Bravo. After lunch, my wife and I went clothes shopping and I purchased a new pin-striped over shirt. After we were finished shopping at the plaza, we were driving home to play World of Warcraft – for the umpteenth millionth time. Unfortunately, unexpected events can happen in our lives which can interrupt our plans, or even the course of one’s life. The former will be more accurate than the latter in this case.

On the way home from our afternoon outing, we were waiting for the traffic light to turn green. Once the light turned green, the intersection appeared to be clear, so I started to proceed to drive through. Unfortunately, a white van appeared to have run what appeared to be a red light and we ended up in a collision with my car flying towards the right. I was able to drive into the spin to pull the car over to the side of the road. After getting out of the car, our vehicle's front-end was smashed and the passenger door was unable to be opened. My wife had to climb out of the back doors to get out of the car. Initially, the other party openly admitted that our light was green while theirs "suddenly turned red". Can we say "beat the light"? A so-called witness stepped in and provided useless information that completely contradicted the stories that myself and the other party claimed. The witness attempted to claim that our light was red and the other party had a green light. Sorry, ma’am, but both parties are in agreement that I had the green light.

Eventually, an ambulance took my wife and I to the hospital as preemptive measures to ensure the baby was alright. Fortunately, the baby turned out fine in the ultrasound and we even learned the baby’s gender: female. Yes, we are going to have a daughter. My wife did not fare so well and she has a fractured knee. She will be on crutches for at least the next four weeks and will be out of work for the next few days. The sheriff's deputy eventually showed up at the hospital to obtain information for the report and harassed me that the entire situation was my fault. Excuse me? I was merely proceeding through a green light while the other party openly admitted to the police officer they were trying to beat the light. The entire accident would have never happened if the other party was not driving so recklessly. The intersection appeared clear so I attempted to proceed through during a green light. The officer was acting like I must have been distracted from possibly a cell phone call or music. I later discovered I accidentally recorded the entire conversation with the other party on my cell phone and they blatantly admitted they ran the light completely red – their light was not even yellow.

The story with the car accident will continue and I am quite sure there will be some fallout. Despite the bad, there were some good as well. We have friends to count on who were there to assist us in our hour of need. Additionally, we now know our baby is a girl. We can now call her "she" instead of "it". She now has an identity, and that makes it feel all the more surreal.

Last night, my workplace held a Christmas party at a hotel in Anaheim, CA. After eating dinner and spending a few hours at a table with my coworkers, I left the party early to pick-up Rock Band for the Xbox 360 at Best Buy. I originally intended to purchase Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock, however, I was unable to find a bundled copy at several stores.

Rock Band unsurprisingly turned out to be an excellent music-based game. Developed by Harmonix, the developers behind the Guitar Hero series, Rock Band feels like what Guitar Hero III would have been if they continued the series. The game plays similarly to the first two Guitar Hero games; however, two new instruments are now supported: drums and microphone for singing. Additional changes include separate boards onscreen to display notes for each player, and completely customizable characters (hair, skin, eye color, shirt, pants, boots, etc.) I highly recommend the game to any fans of the Guitar Hero or Karaoke in general.

Currently, I am playing as the lead guitar and my wife, Heidi, is alternating between the drummer and singer. As we progress through the game we will likely start playing online on Xbox Live.

Last weekend, Heidi and I moved to a new apartment in Laguna Niguel. We were residing in Costa Mesa, however, last February some college students moved into the apartment above us keeping us awake on work nights partying until 5:00 AM, playing their guitar drunk, and smoking pot. We have complained to the apartment management numerous times, however, the apartment repeatedly claims they will give the tenants a final warning. Additionally, the apartment complex routinely does surprise inspections every month in which there feels like there is no privacy. Also, if you have any complaints about the apartment itself such as maintenance issues or pests, the management drags their feet. We went without hot water for nearly four days until the apartment restarted their hot water boilers.

When the contract expired for the previous apartment complex, we decided to move to Laguna Niguel since the development is quite new and the community seems fairly nice. Currently, I am without Internet access as I have not received my cable modem from Cox yet. I was using DSL from AT&T at the previous apartment, but I decided to switch to cable Internet since it is available in this area.

For those unaware, early copies of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows has become available. As a result, some people have begun posting massive spoilers in various forum threads, in chat rooms, and random accounts via instant messaging. Harry Potter fans desiring to avoid any potential spoilers until reading the seventh book may want to avoid public forums until after reading the book for themselves after its release on July 21st.

For those interested in reading likely spoilers such as pending deaths, ending, and the epilogue, feel free to navigate over to the Warcraft III General Discussion forum.

I have been ill as of late, so the website has not received many updates in the past two weeks as a result. I am still ill but I am anticipating that I might get over this sickness by the end of the week. I blame my sister for spreading her germs during Mother’s Day weekend when I visited her.

Anyways, something I have been considering lately is writing custom blog software from scratch. After reviewing various freeware, open-source, and commercial blog software, I have been left unimpressed by the feature set of today’s blog and news article software for websites. Features such as polls, visitor tracking, and AJAX technology is generally not supported by a majority of blog software available. So, I am interesting in developing an AJAX-enabled web application that will act as a single solution stop for website needs. The project is tentatively titled KitsuneBlog and is in the pre-development process (i.e. writing documentation and designing the database schema). It will likely support the Microsoft SQL, MySQL, and Oracle databases. For those curious, KitsuneBlog will definitely be freeware and will likely be open-source. I have yet to decide which license to adopt at this time. More details will come in the near future as they become available.

If anybody is wondering on the ultimate fate of ActiveChat and BattleFix, I have good news and bad news. As for the bad news, ActiveChat will be discontinued and will receive no further updates due to Battle.net no longer supporting chat clients a while ago. As for the good news, there is a chance I might develop third-iteration of BattleFix in the future. I have some ideas on features that would be nice to support in BattleFix that would be useful for troubleshooting Battle.net enabled games and World of Warcraft related issues. However, a final decision on the fate of BattleFix has not been decided yet. It depends on if I feel there is a need in the Blizzard Entertainment community for such an application.

I apologize for the lack of updates throughout the week.  Originally, I was planning to submit many technology related stories, layout changes, import quite a few  articles (approximately 100) from the previous server, and work on a new project to post the source code online.  Unfortunately, I have been sick since Sunday evening and continue to have flu-like symptoms.

Tonight, Heidi and I will be traveling via car to Tucson, Arizona to visit my family for Mother's Day. It will be an eight hour drive up to Tucson, so we will be stopping off at the Golden Acorn Casino late tonight to grab some dinner, and then continue our way up to Tucson. I will likely make an article post or two while visiting my family.

Next week I will be making some changes to the layout such as a new color scheme, extended divider borders, and a new title background graphics. Also, I will begin to develop software -- Windows and web application -- and post the compiled binary and source code on the website, likely under a Project section. The first project will likely be a hit counter written in C#/ASP.Net.

A wise Orc Peon once said, "Work-work!" For the past few weeks, I have been heavily preoccupied with my new job, which has been both gratifying and a challenge. The learning curve at my new position is steep as all my previous programming methodologies are germane. Thus far, I have been completing the assigned tasks early, and utilizing free time for research for upcoming tasks and projects. Within the next week, I will need to learn at least two unfamiliar programming languages for an upcoming project. Overall, I am definitely enjoying the position and the associated challenges as well as the previous position was being quite monotonous.

In other news, next month -- on April 14th, to be exact -- Heidi and I will be holding our wedding and reception afterwards. The wedding and the reception will be in Irvine, California, and as a whole, I am trying to make the wedding entertaining. After attending quite a few standard de facto -- and quite boring -- weddings, my aim is to create a wedding that I would enjoy if I were sitting in the audience. So, time will tell how the wedding turns out as a whole.

A few months ago, I applied for another programming position within the game company I work at. While I currently reside within the company as a tools programmer, this other position pays considerably more and is more involved with our games. Yesterday, I had an interview which lasted over one and a half hours. Overall, the interview seemed quite positive and the interviewers appeared to have enjoyed my responses.

I learned this afternoon that I was selected for the position, which is indeed excellent news. However, I will not start the position until a suitable replacement is found for my existing positon.