Time to put down what's been shakin' with me for the last couple weeks (months???).

First off, Macaulay Culkin (the star of the classic Christmas movie "Home Alone") has a podcast (iTunes link). In a recent episode, he had the Angry Video Game Nerd (YouTube channel) on as a guest. They talked about video game cross-overs and had a neat little discussion about Abobo's Big Adventure!!! I'm particularly happy because they mentioned the game-play as a big positive from the game so that tickled me as the programmer :-)

Give the podcast a listen here (skip to ~17 minutes in): Direct Podcast Stream

On a side note, the Angry Video Game Nerd played through Abobo's Big Adventure and had a pretty epic experience a while back, here's the 1st of 2 vids in case you're interested (I think he tears up a bit at the ending...):

In other news, my BFF (kittadyne.com) runs a freelance machine shop business and has a sweet CNC mill (a robotic arm that cuts things out of solid aluminum, CNC = "Computer Numerical Control"). He recently moved to some property in central CA and set up his CNC in a SHIPPING CONTAINER in his yard. It's actually a really cool setup! I like it cuz you'd never expect, amid all the orange orchards, to find a high-tech business for making billet-cut aerospace parts!

He was working in his shop the other day and went to lift some machine parts out of his machine (not realizing they totaled about 200 lbs.) and threw his back out in a really bad way. He basically can't stand up without crutches. He had just received a rush order for 29 custom cut and assembled parts for airplane interiors and, as you can imagine, was pretty panicked about filling that order while injured. I decided to drive down for a week and help him and it was a crazy cool adventure (with plenty of hard work and long nights mixed in).

Here I am in my WORK apron in front of his CNC machine (dat hair tho riiight???):

He made it really easy for me to make the parts by embedding instructions for me inside of the program he had written (stuff like: the program would stop and a message would appear: "blow off metal shavings"). Here I am running parts with some pretty knappy hair!

It was a really fun learning experience. Here's the process more in-depth:

And the final assembly:

In the end, he paid me in ORANGES!!! (Totally worth it.)

It's not often you get the chance to work, hands-on, with real industry professionals on a massive project. They (the oranges, not the industry professionals) smell great!

I've still been reading/listening to a lot during my commute, mostly podcasts lately. Still really enjoying Le Ton Beau De Marot in physical form... might be my most favorite book of ALL TIME! I'm taking my time and savoring it.

I'm also studying the New Testament in Greek (while learning Greek via the "Greek Interlinear" format). Let me know if you want to know more about that... Superman makes an appearance...

Leave me a message, I'm always open to talk!