My friend Liz Juhasz passed away earlier.. I and many others will miss her dearly.  Though I didn't hang out with her as much as some of my other friends, I still felt really close to her.  When I used to live on campus at UMBC and she came over to visit Rick (her boyfriend at the time), I remember sitting around telling her about stuff going on in my life and hearing about the stuff going on in hers.. helping her through times when she was upset and her talking me through times when I was.  I remember picking her up and swinging her around every time she visited, I remember sitting around making dirty jokes.. I remember holding entire conversations where we would emphasize specific words in the sentence to make it sounds suggestive.. I remember lots and lots of times hanging out with her.  I remember us sitting around talking about plans for the future.. dream houses.. how we would raise our children (not OUR children as in together.. but each of our respective children).. lots of stuff.

She went into the hospital a couple of days ago because she was coughing up blood.. I wanted to go visit her.. but I didn't get a chance to.. I was so busy with work.  I wish I could have seen her.. sorta.. maybe its better that I didn't see her with a pressure mask on her face in a hospital bed with tubes hooked up to her and stuff.. So that I can just remember her as she was before...

I wish I had more pictures of her... I searched everything I have and realized that I only have pictures of her that I took with my camera phone.  Somehow.. in all the pictures I've taken with my digital camera.. of all my friends Ive taken pictures of.. I never got a picture of her with my nice digital camera.. so all my pictures of her aren't all the great of quality.. I never really thought about it..  Even when she went to the hospital because she was coughing up blood, I just thought "oh, she will be OK.. I'll see her when she gets out of the hospital and everything will be all better"..  You can find the pictures that I do have of her over here.

It was really hard to write this post.. I kept getting really upset while writing it.. I'm going to try and get some sleep.. if I have anything else to say I will post it tomorrow afternoon (I'm heading to Sterling, VA with my boss Steve tomorrow morning to see an off site server room).

Goodbye Liz.. You are loved by many and will be missed by all those that knew you.

Wooo ICC (Intercounty Connector)!!! If you haven't already heard, go read the story that was in The Gazette.  I know I should be posting about all the amazing things that have been happening in my life (since i haven't posted in a long time), but when I saw this story I got so excited I had to post about it.  To all the Maryland Democrats (and of course the Republicans) out there who voted Ehrlich into office because he promised to build the ICC, you can stop worrying that he wouldn't follow through with his campaign promise.  See, Republicans aren't all lying cheating fat cats.. this one actually did what he said he was going to.  To all you people who were against the ICC.. and all those people who knew where the ICC was going to be built but bought a house in the way anyways.. shut up and get out of the way.. my shortcut to getting around Maryland is coming through!

At some point I remember reading a study that said the ICC would somehow cause the amount of traffic on surrounding roads to get worse.. I didn't believe it then.. and I can't believe that anyone did.. or still does.  Some of these protesters are hilarious though.. here is a quote from the article:

‘‘You will pay with your souls!” shouted Eve Burton, a 26-year resident of Cashell Estates in Derwood, where 14 homes will be bulldozed.

Anyways.. I'll post again soon with updates on all the happy things that have been happening in my life (like all the wonderful time I spend with Jessica)

Update: More people are linking to the Washington Post article.. So here it is.

My weekend was great.  I went to visit Jessica at her parent's house in Fallston on Friday night.  I had to spend the night in a different room then her... which sucked.. but it wasn't all bad.. When I get there we had dinner, then I helped her put her little brother Dylan to sleep.. then we went to bed.  Oh! I finally met her sister.. when I met her family last time when I helped her move stuff at college, her sister wasn't there.. her sister is.. umm.. interesting.. I'll just leave it there for now.. heh.

So on Saturday morning we got up and Jessica and her mother made pancakes and eggs.  Then her mother, her brother and her sister went to workout at a local health club and Jessica and I got to spend time together alone.   Later, we went for a walk for 2 miles on a trail and talked and stuff.  When we got back we took Dylan to Chuck E Cheese's for lunch.  He got stuck in the tubes for a while (he didn't know how to get out), but once we got him out he had lots of fun.  After dinner we drove to Salisbury so she could go to work in the morning.

On Sunday morning we got breakfast at IHOP, went back to her apartment to take a shower, then went to her work.  We were there from 11am to 5pm.. Then we picked up her friend Krista and went to Olive Garden for dinner.  Went back to her apartment for a while, then I headed home.  It was a great weekend, I had lotsa fun and enjoyed all the time I spent with Jessica.

The past couple of times I had driven home from Jessica's I ended up getting drowsy while driving.. and this time I figured out why.  My mind was getting tired from just watching a dark straight road for the majority of the 2.5 hour drive.. so this time i forced myself to think about Aldahar and ideas I had for improving some functionality and adding on new stuff.  It worked out really well.. I got a lot of stuff thought through and I didn't get drowsy at all. Which reminds me.. I wont be posting details about my work on Aldahar on here anymore.. instead Dan and I have put together a blog just for that.  So from now on you will have to checkout the Aldahar Development Blog as well as mine!

Alright, I'm tired and need to get some sleep.. I'll post some more soon.  Goodnight! 

Woo! http://youtube.com/watch?v=k4MUt6rnPUI

I want it now!

Woo.. I haven't posted in a long time.. I been busy.  BTW.. the previous post.. I didn't write that.. Jessica did.  But I am in love with her.  We went out for our 1 month anniversary on the day after it (she was busy on Friday, so we had to go out Saturday).  I've been enjoying all the time I've been spending with her, each and every weekend I drive down to Salisbury to see her.  I'm so happy.  She is in Florida visiting her dad this week, but when she gets back this weekend we are going to Busch Gardens! Yay opening weekend!

So I've gotten a lot of work done on Aldahar's servers recently.  Most notably is the NPCs.  I've got some basic scripting running now.. scripts are loaded from the database and interpreted when needed.  I don't have much in their other then allowing the NPCs to execute commands just like normal clients, and some basic pattern matching triggers.. and variable replacements.. all of which adds up to being able to make an NPC say a sentence containing your character's name in it when ever you say that NPC's name.  It's going well.. soon there will be some more advanced stuff for NPCs to do.. hopefully intelligent random movement around the map.

There's more stuff I wanted to write about.. but I'm really tired.. I'll make sure I make time to post more tomorrow.  Have a good night!

La-La-La-La-I-N-G... hehe.  So my date this past Friday went great.  Jessica is so excellent.  We have lots of stuff in common and she makes me smile and laugh a lot.  So.. what else can I say.. shes really beautiful (check it out) and she likes me.  I'm going to go down to her college next weekend and hang out for most of the weekend.  Oh! Since we wont see each other on Valentine's Day, I gave her gifts this past weekend.  She really loved the gifts I gave her.  She totally wasn't expecting one of the gifts.. hehe.  Anyways..

It snowed last night and some of today.  I love snow! Its great!  This is like.. the second snow storm of the year.. this winter wasn't that great.. oh well.. maybe next year.

I found this great article on the strengths of people who have ADD.. it describes things about me almost perfectly.

Ok, I'm going to get some sleep.. I'm going to be really busy at work tomorrow.

P.S. Jessica rocks!