I was walking alone alongside the Sevier river the other day. This part of the river was wide and slow, perfect for floating and swimming. Behind me a small way was a truck carrying a half a dozen teenagers and floating tubes. Due to some trick of the acoustics in the area, I could hear one person whistling Come Thou Fount as clearly as if he were standing behind my right ear.

Do you remember when, as a teenager, some things were just funny for no reason whatsoever? I hear one of the young ladies in the truck giggle: "Look! Some random guy! hahahaha!" The "random guy" was me. I turned and waved, and a boy said, "Dude, he can hear you! hahahaha!" They pass me by giggling like they had found the richest joke ever.

A while back, I mentioned that my dreamed-up software company caught the attention of credit card companies and banks across the United States. It has been getting better, and funnier, since then.  I suppose one might consider placing my dream company's title in our DNS record to be a subtle and superb marketing strategy...

Our latest client: Smith's Food & Drug Stores. We received in the mail today a letter asking Having trouble deciding what to give your employees or clients this holiday season? We have the perfect answer. The answer? A Smith's Gift Certificate or Gift Card; it's the ideal gift.

Now, I cannot argue with the simple truth that a Gift Card is an ideal gift. A gift card from one of my old college jobs came as a real life-saver one Christmas. However, considering that the name K-B-Rimington Productions was made public only by my DNS record, I am thoroughly stunned to receive this kind of solicitation by none other than Smith's.

Sigh.

I suppose it will never end. At any rate, it's a jolly joke! 

We were surprised a week or so ago to receive a credit card offer from Capital One. A credit card offer, you say? This was not just any credit card offer. It was addressed to K B Rimington Productions, Attn: Keith Rimington.

I wondered: How did they know I dream of having a software business called K-B-Rimington Productions? The offer read, Congratulations on your new company. As near as I could tell, the phrase only existed meaningfully in the intro movie of the Battleship game I wrote for a college assignment.

I was doing some account management on our DNS when it came to me. When we set up kbrimington.net, I was particularly daydreamy. I registered the account under K-B-Rimington Productions and listed myself as the contact. That must be how Capital One found me.

Sneaky fellas, aren't they? 

In June, we planted our own flowerpot garden. We enjoyed watching all the little plants grow. I also came to realize that chives are a kind of onion. That meant that the pot that was half onions and half chives...yeah, it was all chives.

At length, we harvested our crop. We had enough onion to garnish one salad, and enough basil for one pot of something basil-ly. We were richly rewarded for our vigilance. My shoulders still ache from the effort.

While pregnancy gradually ruled out strenuous physical activity for Delores, we found ourselves immersed in 3000 pages of J. K. Rowling's fantastic Harry Potter series. I hadn't intended to read any of them at all; but after perusing a handful of rich pages, I couldn't help myself anymore.

I followed Harry during his many late-night excursions; sometimes long after the sun went down on the muggle world I hold so dear. I couldn't put the books down.

At long last, the final, thrilling, scene drew to a close and I struggled to catch my breath as though I had finished a race. Neville won my respect, Malfoy my pity, and I was duly surprised by wonderful twists and turns. Monday night was the first full night's-worth of rest I have had since I first entered Hogwarts with Harry.

I chuckled to myself. I recognized a feeling of denial. Is it really over? It felt like the same denial I felt when I finished my degree. A month of immersive pleasure-reading felt like a lifetime, and it feels somewhat peculiar to peer out at my unmagical world and resume muggle life again.

sigh

At least, I say to myself, my baby girl may want to hear daddy read to her. I can't wait to see those eyes of wonder.

The beginnings of a deep sleep were beginning to swirl around in my head when I heard a squeal from Delores down the hall. I don't know how, but in an instant I was at her side anxiously rasping "What, what? Are you OK?"

And then I saw him: a cockroach about the size of a small mouse. We had left a door open in the house for about an hour, cooling the apartment down, and this scurrying little critter must have darted in during that time.

Delores urged me to kill him, and I looked about frantically for something sturdy and flat that would do the trick, being barefoot and uninterested in grimy cockroach guts all over my feet. Not wanting to startle the critter and drive him off before I got a good shot in, I grabbed the first sturdy squarish object in sight: a tall box of fireworks.

Without a thought, I brought the edge of the box of fireworks squarely on the back of our visitor. He darted away with the speed of a mouse! Now I was startled and I brought the box of fireworks down again. Crack! The critter paused only a moment, and then darted for the safety of the tangle of computer cords near our desk.

"Oh, no you don't!"

Finally recognizing the danger of trying to exterminate cockroaches with a box of unspent fireworks, I grabbed the next best thing I could reach: the power strip next to the computer. Thwak! No good. He was gone behind the hutch now.

Ohhh! That was it! I found the can of RAID and I hunted that cockroach down within an inch of his life. There wasn't a corner of the house untouched. I silently and wearily dared the critter to bare its cockroachish little face.

In the morning, he was there on the floor, not two feet from where he was originally sighted, lying on his back twitching weakly. With smug victory on my face, I walked him to the toilet where he could wash off. It was back to the sewer for our Brigham City sewer cockroach, and a day of glorious victory for the Keith.

I told Delores, and I called him Fluffy, which Delores observed probably stemmed from Harry Potter; Fluffy was Rubeus Hagrid's three-headed hellhound. I guess if it had been a big dog, the box of fireworks might have come in more handy, eh?

Delores and I planted a vast garden this week. Our anticipated crop will include every imaginable vegetable, provided one's imagination is limited to a handfil of small plants soaking up the sun in our aparment window. In one long pot are onions and chives. Another boasts basil and something else -- I can't exactly remember. With only a handful of plants, one might think I could keep them all straight, but I already look at the moist dirt in the pots with anticipation for the surprise. What did we plant, and where?

It feels refreshing, really. I haven't had a garden, even a flowerpot garden, since I lived with my parents. We kept a small handful of fruit trees, clumps of zucchini and pumpkin, rows of corn, and even carrots which, due to the native Utah clay, often turned out to appear like short, fat, orange toes. Having a little something to watch grow is so very different than the day-in and day-out routine of writing software.

Delores makes it fun as well. She filled pots with dirt and drew furrows in the soil with her fingertips. Handfuls of dirt were saved for Fergusen, the family plant. She is always full of sunshine and laughter.

When I woke the next morning, my neck and shoulders ached like I had planted acres of rocks. It took me some time, and the help of Delores, to figure that it was likely because I bought our dirt while walking home from my carpool. I had walked home from the store with two large bags of soil, one over each shoulder. A half of a block later it was two large bags under my arms. Shortly later it was one bag across my back somewhat with the other clung to my chest like a cherished teddy bear.

The little adventure ended and our garden is planted. I wonder how large the plants will be when Abigail is here? I guess we'll see.

We just enjoyed an unusually neat experience. Delores and I went for a walk (that's not the unusual part) through our new neighborhood. A few blocks from home we met the family of our mailman. In only a few minutes we were friends. What was unusual about the whole experience was how welcome and friendly everything seemed to be from the very first moment. They brought chairs out for Delores and the other lady-folk, and we chatted idly for some time.

I think I experienced a little of the kind of hospitality I want to always share with others. Walking away, I felt like I was walking away from the house of old friends. We even have a tentative dinner date coming up. Walking home hand-in-hand with Delores, chatting and laughing together in blithe merriment, I thought to myself how wonderful it is to be in a community I can call home.

We finally made it! No one broke their backs, either.

We quite like our place. We can no longer walk through the entire apartment in a straight line, which is a testimony to the comparative spaciousness we now enjoy. The neatest thing of all is the bedroom adjacent to our bedroom. We call it "The baby's room." That phrase is so exhilarating to me.

Thanks for all who could come and help. My dad and several brothers (those without broken backs), Delores's dad and brother, and some friends came. We couldn't have done it without them.

We had guests over to our home today from our church. I was cleaning dishes in the kitchen when a memory came to me. Years ago, perhaps before I was ten years old, guests were expected at our home in West Jordan. Mom was busily encouraging each of us to help make the house clean and presentable.

Naturally, cleaning was not nearly the priority to me as it was to my mother. "Isn't cleaning dishonest, mom?" I asked. "This isn't how we always are..." With seven children, the house was rarely immaculate, but that is not to suggest it was ever terribly dirty.

I don't exactly remember mom's response, but I do remember that I didn't get out of any chores. I chuckle, now. There I was, rapidly cleaning dishes with the hope that no one would know that we often have half a sink full, and I thought to myself for a moment... "Is this honest...?"

kbrimington.net got a facelift, and an upgrade into ASP.NET. A lot of new things are coming. Most importantly to us, we are expecting our first child soon, and the sooner the site is fit, the sooner we can post baby pictures. Of course, right now that consists of three ultra-sound snapshots.

Also, catch the latest news with Delores' thesis. We have nearly finished data collection, and are eagerly anticipating what results may come. Our eyes are set on May for Delores to finish the work she started two years ago. The end is so near I can smell it!

As soon as I can write the code, I plan to make available a regular development blog. I've been helped by so many neat computer professionals while working on various projects for ATK Launch Systems that I want to give back to the Internet community a little of what I have learned. Check in soon.

While migrating to the new site, I found these programs I wrote while working on my degree at Utah State University. I have many fun memories learning how to write the code for them, so I'm posting them here.

Happy Coding!

Download	The first official K-b-rimington Productions application is Battleship 2006, based on the 1984 Milton Bradley game, Battleship. In this game, compete against multiple levels of artificial intelligence to become the king of the seas! OpenGL graphics draw flying cannonballs and animations to enhance the playing experience. Logging in over 11,000 lines of code, this is my most ambitious project ever! Enjoy! Thanks to Dean Mathias for graphics feedback, and my wife, Delores, for her unfailing good taste.
Download	WereRabbits Hearts, developed in 2005 by Keith Rimington, Jeremy Pack, and Cody Hillyard. This application includes 3-dimensional graphics, network play, artificial intelligence, networked chat, animation and sound. To enjoy Hearts to the fullest, click on everything in the room, such as the walls, your opponents, or the portraits of dogs playing poker. Thanks to Jeremy and Cody for their tireless assistance developing my favorite CS project to date!
Download	The Game of Life v2.0 is the next stage of John Conway's wonderful simulation. This new version uses OpenGL to accellerate graphics, allowing a framerate of up to 120 generations per second! Save and load different configurations with this new version. Print your favorite generation, or circulate favorite patterns on the internet. Includes a short history of the Game of Life and a summary of some of the most famous basic formations. Perhaps future iterations of the Game of Life will expand the grid, add scrolling, and include file formats used by Game of Life researchers throughout the world. Keep an eye out for the next Game of Life!
Download	The Game of Life v1.0 is based on John Conway's fascinating simulated, "petri dish." Each cell of the grid represents a place where "life" may exist. But life is fragile, and can be snuffed out by overcrowding or even lonliness. Build colonies of tiny organisms, flying spaceships, blossoming flowers, or any of a variety of new formations and watch it grow! Now Available : The Game of Life v2.0 with enhanced features and preset formations! The Game of Life v2.0 will surely advance the enjoyment of watching the "Circle of Life!"
Download	Hangman v1.0 is the newest addition to my software projects. Developed completely in C#, Hangman v1.0 represents my first work ever in the language. Enjoy a 34,000 word dictionary containing seemingly endless hangman fun. Extract the RAR archive anywhere you want and enjoy. May require the .NET Framework 1.1 to function. Thanks to Dr. Greg Jones for this fun introduction to C#.
Download	In 2005 I began Studying OpenGL to prepare for the programming required for WereRabbits Hearts. Using the wonderful online tutorials by NeHe posted on www.gamedev.net, I wrote this simple program called FlowerCube. Use arrows to change the rotation of the cube, page up and page down for zoom, F, L, and B for other settings. The picture of the flower is a cropping from a photograph I took with my wife while we were on our Honeymoon, so this simple program is one of my favorites.
Download	Stars, although another very simple OpenGL program, has an enchanting appeal as the formations fluxuate. This program used alpha blending to overlap flat textures to create the allusion of distant, three-dimensional stars. Thanks again to NeHe and his wonderful online tutorials. I think this application could make a splendid screen saver. Perhaps in the near future I will add the screen saver handlers and redistribute, but until then I am quite pleased with the result.
Download	IceRoom is yet another OpenGL program I owe to the NeHe tutorials. This application places the user as a "character" in a small room. Using the arrows, page up, and page down allow the user to travel this small world. Caution is advised; there is no collision detection. Some other features, such as lighting and texture quality may be toggled used various letters of the keyboard. Enjoy this frozen chamber!