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After 2 weeks of vacation, I return to the office tomorrow, and since I’ve been so poor at updating my blog this year, I figured a post-mortem on the vacation would be a good thing to kick-off with.

5 things that went right:

1. Quality time with the family - Coming out of the overtime haze to spend time with my wife and daughter was infinitely rewarding. Cass’s first teeth, first solid food, first time rolling over and being generally psyched on playing with daddy was so awesome, it’s silly. Going back to work, this will be the only thing I will truly miss.

2. Chillin at home - Two weeks at home. No trips, no travel - just time to read, play video games and take baths. Much Halo 3, Company of Heroes, Magic Online and Puzzle Fighter HD was played. Two books and oodles of magazines were read and a great many baths were taken. So good.

3. Getting centered - Having a baby is crazy and finalling a game is crazy - put those 2 back-to-back and you simply go crazy. After the first week, I felt rested. After the 2nd week, I feel ready to rock. And it feels good.

4. Learning Flash and ActionScript - The single best platform for entertaining and interacting is the web browser. The most flexible, accessible and robust environment for developing for the web browser is Flash. Since this is the future, it’s time I got with the program - literally.

5. Absorbing inspiration - Scott Pilgrim, Avatar, House, The Office, rewatching some old DVD’s, Lean Software Development, Xbox Live (so good it blows me away every time I use it) and too many Flash games and applications to list. The tank is more than full.

5 things that went wrong:

1. Chores left undone - I didn’t put my new bike together, finish the moulding in the house, move the DVD collection to the office or clean the basement. These will all have to be stretched out over the weekends of the future. And they all need to get done.

2. No Cubicle Corps work - It’s disappointing and downright silly when I consider how long it’s been since I’ve worked on CC. The big delay at this point is getting the set built, and the guy building the set was busy helping a farmer who fell and hurt his back. Needless to say, if somebody is helping out a farmer during the end of the season, everything else takes back seat to that.

3. That ill-fated trip to Chilliwack - I love going to Chilliwack, it is the great escape - going to visit my wife’s family. Needless to say, baby Cassandra has a bit of sensory overload, and after trying to get her to sleep for 2 hours, we decided to pack up the car and drive home instead of spending the night. Despite the spontaneously combusting baby, much fun was had visiting family, getting lost in a corn maze and eating copious amounts of turkey.

4. Not enough time with friends - With Raffy going into emergency surgery, Will doing a bundle of travelling and me, generally not taking the initiative, I didn’t spend as much time with friends as I would have liked. Heck, I didn’t even make my way to Richmond to visit the old gang at Nokia - and that’s simply shameful, since I really miss them folk.

5. The Magic Online addiction - I wasted too many nights throwing virtual cards and tapping virtual mana. I should have been playing different games, learning something new, or simply sleeping, but I dove deep into the world of Magic Online and rekindled my love of deck building. I’m trying to convince myself that I’ve had my fill, and I haven’t played in 5 days… so maybe I have.