Today I gave a
couple hours lecture to a couple of developers from our China
Development Center (CDC, which to me is Center for Disease Control).
Went over the most complex call flows -- transfer and conference and
what we expect from route points. The middleware they're coding against
is JTAPI which I've never liked. After the better part of a decade the
interface is still too limited and the CDC guys are going to have to
code workarounds to comply with our SDK standards.
Meanwhile all the talking is hurting my throat. Apparently my throat is
a bit sore. Could be because of the generally cold weather, especially
when I'm sleeping at night. It also doesn't help that I tend to sing
when I'm driving which uses up my vocal chords. Anyway, I feel better
now that I've rested my throat for a few hours.
For lunch I had canned split pea and ham soup, Progresso I think. You
don't add water so I just eat it out of the can. Doesn't bother me and
it's fairly good, though admittedly it'd be better hot.
West Wing had a really good episode tonight. Alan Alda is playing a
Republican Senator running for the presidency. Meanwhile the Democrats
have a lackluster VP and a former VP who had to step down due to a sex
scandal. And the Senator is from California which is interesting. Lots
of political talk and strategy. And now President Bartlett's MS is
really starting to affect him. It's all riveting.
I think peanuts are my favorite nut. Roasted and salted of course. When
I was a kid I liked walnuts more, and pistachios are also pretty good.
But roasted and salted peanuts, in the shell, are very tasty and
they're relatively generic for nuts. |
So I've playing Apeiron X,
which is a Macintosh Centipede clone by
Ambrosia Software. It's actually an old game that they updated to Mac
OS X a couple of weeks ago. Price is $15 (since it's an old game) so I
bought it.
It's a fun game. You only use the mouse. You have the familiar
Centipede elements: mushroom forest, multiple centipedes, a spider
creature, a flea creature that creates mushrooms, a gecko that poisons
mushrooms.
One additional creature is an alien that floats across the screen,
destroying mushrooms and is worth lots of bonus points. There are also
a couple of special mushrooms at upper levels: one that falls down if
you shoot it, if you shoot it a lot you can destroy it for lots of
points, otherwise you try to avoid it; and a mushroom that shoots back
(once) if you shoot it.
Additionally there are powerups: multishot (generally useful but not as
fast firing as single shot if the object is really close), guided shot
(tracks your launcher), bonus multiplier, magic mushroom (x10 points
for a limited time), walk through mushrooms, shield (limited time),
destroy all mushrooms near the bottom of the screen, extra life, and a
padlock so that you keep most of yout powerups when you die.
The powerups drop as coins and the extra life powerup is rather common.
Usually I can max out at 12 or so lives you can have. Getting up to the
mid 20th levels is rather easy. But by then you have no powerups and
have to rely on your single shot launcher. It's a fun game though I'll
probably tire of it soon.
|