Yesterday I had a late start due to the late night the day before.  When I finally crawled out of bed, I headed to Home Depot for chainsaw chain oil and a new chainsaw chain (which I didn't end up needing).

Our backyard buts up against a neighbor who has a small forest in his backyard.  He likes it that way, and I actually like the natural privacy fence it provides.  When we moved in, that forest was slowly moving over the small wire fence there and into our yard.  We didn't think much of it.  This year that brush had suddenly become very small trees (which the trunk being no more than 5" in diameter.  It was also killing our grass and preventing any grass from growing near the fence.  With chainsaw in hand, I cleared that area out so we can put some mulch near the fence and (next year) plant some crawling vines or something, along with putting in a bit nicer fence than the wire one currently there.

After that, I came in and wrote yesterday's report.  Then I headed to Best Buy to pick up my copy of Gears of War 3 (which is still in the package due to ZOMGBUSY).

When I got home from that, I headed back to the Bean Cycle to meet Jeremy and get some more done on Skeleton Jump.  It was slow going, and I eventually broke down and wrote a blog post because I just couldn't get in the groove.

In the early evening, I headed home to spend some time with Mo before she headed off to derby practice again.  Then I rode over to Hacking Society, which I haven't been to in a while.  It was here that I got into my groove working on Skeleton Jump, and completed the Main Menu screen and got some of the physics sorted out.

When everyone peaced out from Hacking Society, a fellow hacker and I re-located to the Alley Cat for some more late night hacking.  The weight of Skeleton Jump started to bear down on me, as I realized things weren't going to fall into place as I expected (which just means I need to work a bit more on it).

I came home about 2:30 on Wednesday morning.  When I walked into our bedroom, my wife woke up and (because she was half asleep) thought I was an intruder.  She didn't scream.  She kinda wimpered, even after I announced myself.  It's horrified me to have scared my wife enough that I saw a new side of her.  I'll have to be careful not to do that again.

I eated it.

I am a hacker.  I spend a lot of my free time hacking.  I love to hack.

Will you find me in a basement listening to techno and breaking into government websites? No. Well, probably not (I'll try anything once).  Do I wear rollerblades and yell phrases like "Hack the Planet!"? No.

I see lots of people saying things like "My Facebook account got hacked." "Some hacked into my email." "Wordpress gets hacked all the time."

People keep using the word "hack" to imply malice. Stop. Please. Please stop.

The Jargon File's entry on "hack" says:

Hacking might be characterized as ‘an appropriate application of ingenuity’. Whether the result is a quick-and-dirty patchwork job or a carefully crafted work of art, you have to admire the cleverness that went into it.

When (not if) your Wordpress site has unauthorized access, you can consider the site "cracked" or "compromised" if you want to imply malicious intent.  Please don't say "hack" here.  It might also appropriate to use the word hack, because it probably did require some amount of ingenuity, but if you're wanting to imply malicious intent, choose another word please.

When someone gains access to your Facebook account, you probably didn't get hacked.  You got phished.  In fact, phishing tends to imply that the thing being "hacked" (in the "appropriate application of ingenuity") is you, because you were dumb enough to give up your name and password.

Please, for hackers everywhere, stop using the word "hack" improperly.

...just so I can look back and see whether I actually got things done this week or not...

I started out yesterday by replacing the tire (yes, the $70 tire) and tube on my road bike and then riding 40 miles.  My goal this week is to ride 200 miles, which should get me close to 3500 miles this year (I was originally impressed with my 2500 mile checkpoint).  Hope we get steady weather for another month or so.

Got home, showered, trimmed my beard, and went to Everyday Joe's coffee shop for some work on Skeleton Jump.  Skeleton Jump is the game I've been working on with Jess Smart Smiley.  I'm hoping to get most of the hard coding work done this week.

I broke for lunch at noon and had lunch at Whole Foods with my buddy Jeremy, who's relationship is valuable to me but has been neglected due to ZOMGBUSY that I shouldn't have gotten into in the first place (there are too many people on that list for me to get to every day this week, but I'm going to try).

After that, we both re-located to The Bean Cycle where we continued working.  Some bugs in my Skeleton Jump code had me scratching my head for a bit, so I didn't get the progress I wanted during the day.

When my wife got home from class, I went home to spend some time with her before she needed to head off to derby practice.  When she did need to head off, I rode with her and then forked off to the Alley Cat for some hacking.  That was about 6:30.

About 9:00, my buddy Matt joined me at the Alley Cat.  He wrote a blog post while I continued working on Skeleton Jump.  I started hitting a groove there, and shortly after Matt left, the Alley Cat got quieter and my velocity sped up.  I made very good progress until I decided to call it a night at 2AM on Tuesday.  :)

Skeleton Jump's first level is "complete" (sans some animation polish), and the Main Menu is set to be complete today.

If you're still reading this, be a dear and go "Like" Skeleton Jump on Facebook.