The Ever Expanding Imperial Court

Greetings, my loyal subjects!

A couple of weeks ago, the Head Imperial Warlock held a feast in my honor, as well as to celebrate the day of his birth. During the banquet, he informed me that he had been re-reading some of the entries of my Imperial Blog, and that he still found them "amusing". I entertained the thought of once again granting my loyal subjects the privilege of having glimpses of my Imperial Life, however I could not find the motivation to take up the Imperial Pen once more.

About a week later, the Head Imperial Chambermaid and I were looking down from the highest tower of the Imperial Palace. We were discussing my duties as a video game designer, which I graciously took on some year and a half ago despite my already demanding responsibilities as your benevolent Empress. I was concerned that my performance as a video game designer falls short of what is deemed worthy of my noble station.

The Head Imperial Chambermaid suggested that maybe I just need a different creative outlet, as focusing on the video game I am working on may be causing me to stagnate. I have been working on a few other creative projects, none of them having much progress, so I thought maybe doing something fun and light-hearted might inspire me.

And so, here I am \o/

But undertaking this endeavor is not without problems. As my loyal subjects know, every member of the Imperial Court has been assigned a title to designate their role in my ever glorious Empire. However, I have been remiss in involving myself in the affairs of the Imperial Court for so long, I forgot which Courtier has been assigned which title! What's more, the Imperial Court had expanded to accommodate even more of my adoring loyal subjects, whose titles I have yet to assign.

I will also be re-assigning some of the titles to certain Courtiers to fit their current circumstances.

So I have now officially shared yet another page of My Imperial Life to my loyal subjects. Will this open up another chapter of My Imperial Life for public view? I am not omniscient, so I do not know.

But we shall see ^_^

For now,

Signed,
Her Imperial Majesty

Java Forever

Greetings my loyal subjects!

Obviously, work has eaten me alive, so I am now sneaking a blog update before I return to my daily eight-hour worship of Java ^_^

In the meantime, I shall leave you with a video that my officemates used to indoctrinate me into the cult of Java ^_^

(Warning: Requires programming knowledge to appreciate)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d9JIiCkDyMQ

Signed,
Her Imperial Majesty

P.S. My officemates are NOT geeks >< (or so they say)

The Geek Trap

Greetings my loyal subjects!

So after weeks of enduring bullying from my so-called non-geeky officemates, I have decided to honor my Imperial legacy and rise against this injustice! Therefore, as my revenge, I have created The Geek Trap!

How To Make A Geeky Officemate Trap, Imperial Style

1)  Grab a copy of a video game magazine from the Imperial Consort's office.
2a) Sit next to the target and slowly rifle through the pages.
2b) Dangle the magazine in front of the target's computer monitor.
3) Paste a smug look on your face as target grabs for the magazine.
4) Enjoy the target's confession of geekiness.

Tip: Leave the magazine on your desk. More geeks will reveal themselves once they pick it up ;)

Moral of the story: Geeks are everywhere, you just have to know how to find them (or coax them out of their closets).

Signed,
Her Imperial Majesty

Work Perks

Greetings my loyal subjects!

Let me tell you some facts about my new work place.

1) It is within walking distance of all the best eating places in this part of the motherland.
2) It is located on the ground floor. Because I am afraid of heights, this is a VERY GOOD thing.
3) FREE MILO. (I know at least one of my readers will be insanely jealous.)
4) There is no dress code, so I can wear whatever the hell I want.
5) Flexi-time, so I can raid in the morning!
6) They have a Wii!

So after exchanging pleasantries with my new officemates on my first day of work, I dropped the big question.

Empress: So, when are the DotA tournaments?
Officemate: Uh, we don't really play DotA here.
Empress: *gasp* What do you do after work!?!?!
Officemate: We go jogging ^_^
Empress: ~_~ Are you sure this is a software development company?

So yeah. These people are JOCKS. ~_~ The only games they have on their Wii are either Wii Sports or some variant of it. Haven't they heard of Guitar Hero or Rock Band?

Sheesh.


Signed,
Her Imperial Majesty

Joy

Greetings my loyal subjects!

I seem to be on an emotional roller coaster this past few days. Despite the previous emo post, a typhoon, and my gay friend going ninja on me and making anonymous comments on the Imperial Blog, I ended the weekend feeling happier.

And now, because everybody hates Mondays, I am going to talk about work.

A client of mine wanted to make the switch from Windows to Linux. They have applications written in Visual Basic that access and manipulate Microsoft Office documents. The thing is, when they said the want to move away from Microsoft, they meant they want to move everything away from Microsoft. Including documents.

The thing is, their Visual Basic applications manipulate the documents using macros (written in, guess what, Visual Basic for Applications). They want to use Open Office instead, whose macros must be written in Open Office Basic.

Thus, this is what they wanted me to do: Find the differences between VBA and OOB, and write an automated translator so we don't have to do it manually.

I of course thought that this was a nigh impossible task. I spent the previous week researching and trying things out and getting frustrated in the process.

But this morning, something wondrous happened. I discovered that Open Office does support VBA. All I have to do is add a single line of code at the top.

See, a programmer's job is to solve problems They deal with long hours of stress and frustration trying to figure out just how the heck to make things work. Heck, even when I'm asleep, I often dream about trying to fix stuff (when I wake up I already have a solution in my head :p).

But when things like these happen, when you find a solution to a problem that you initially thought was impossible to solve, you are consumed by that overwhelming feeling of euphoria that you just want to jump around and scream and dance with joy.

And this is what keeps a programmer going.

Sorry for the lack of angst and sarcasm. I'm just too damn happy today.

Signed,
Her Imperial Majesty