Some really good fan fiction here. This is a story of Obi-Wan talking about his experiences after sending Anakin to his doom. Post Episode 3 pre-Star Wars.

ExtremeTech has some analysis of the recent Longhorn build shown at WinHec. Check it out.

It's mother's day and my wife is out getting a dress for dinner tonight. So I'm at home with the boys. The boys are mirror images of one another.

The 7 year old is gentle, kind, thoughtful. But also soft, fearful, and uncompetitive.  The 3 year old by contrast is strong, willful, adventurous but also disobedient, slow to learn, stubborn.

I've been trying to teach the 7 year old how to ride his bike. It's been difficult because he has no interest in learning whatsoever and is afraid of falling. It's been quite a trial getting him to learn and progress has been slow. Because Alex, the older one, has always been so cooperative, we attributed it all to good parenting. We haven't needed to spank him (or at least very very rarely). He rarely needs time outs.

Ryan, the 3 year old, by contrast, just is incredibly disobedient to the point that I wonder if he's just slow. With Alex, I've never counted to 3. I would say "1..2.." and voila, he'd be up to his room or doing whatever.  With Ryan it's "1...2....2.5...2.75...3!....3!!!" and he'll just sit there defiantly. Even today I had to give him a spanking for throwing things at his older brother in the head. Alex, ever kind and gentle, didn't retaliate.  I told Ryan he needed to go to his room. He said "No." But he kissed Alex on the head where one of the metal projectiles had hit. I said "That's a nice boy, but you still need to go to yur room for a few minutes." "NO.' Eventually this lead to "1...2....3"

When I reach 3, spanking is pretty much my main weapon. I had never actually expected to get to 3. I'd been a parent 5 years before I'd gotten to 3 and like I said, I've never had to count all the way to 3 with the older one.  So 3 swats to the rear end and off to his room I put him. 

About 15 minutes later I go up to his room and explain why he was disicplined. He said he understood and asked for piece of cheese. So I brought him down, got him some cheese and then he says "Nah, not hungry anymore." To which I said "You asked for cheese, you need to at least eat some of it. I don't want to waste it." He said "No." Again.. just 15 minutes ago we went through this. "Eat a piece of cheese NOW." "NO". "1...2...3" now this time since he hadn't done anything that I felt warranted a spanking I sent him to his room. This time he obeyed.

Which is where he is now. In his room crying. And I feel awful because it breaks my heart to see either of my two children unhappy. But I also fear that a lack of personal disicpline will cause them much more grief in the long run if it isn't instilled in them now. And so here we are.

Along with the most original icon package Tuesday will have the judges looking at the most USABLE viual style. Which one of the visual styles is the one you think you'd end up using the most on a day to day basis?

Let us know your favorites. Besides hundrds of dollars in cash for the winners, the top placer wins an ATI Radeon XT with 256MB of video RAM!

Here's a thread of suggestions based on 2A.

IF we have time before release (And if we don't, then we can put it out later hopefully) I'd like there to be a campaign mode where you start playing against terrible candidates on different maps and then as you win you work your way up the ladder until you're eventually competing against Lincoln and such.

Judging is well on its way for the first two events. Results should pop out next week.

Next in the judging list is the most creative icon package. What icon package do you think is the most creative? Tell us what you think!

So we saw Van Helsing. I didn't have particulrly high expectations for it but on the other hand I was pretty excited to see it. Personally, I really liked it. But then again, I always found The Mummy and The Mummy Returns to be enjoyable (but not as good as Van Helsing). But it is definitely in that same feel.

Lots of special effects shots -- LOTS of them. Of our group that went, opinions were mixed. I kind of felt it was up there with Indiana Jones in terms of overall enjoyment though the acting on all sides was not nearly as good (get Harrison Ford in there and it would have been a classic). Others thought it was just cheesy trash but they also hated The Mummy.

I personally recommend it, especially if you like Vampire movies.

One of the benefits of having been an only child is that there was always room to store all my stuff and I had no siblings to break them.

I always told my mom that one day I'd give my children my toys. Well, sure enough I did.

Here's Ryan with my matchbox cars all lined up.

What an awful day it was today. It started well. One of our key developers is leaving to go to Microsoft whic is a bummer but we had a last day lunch and movie (saw Van Helsing which was pretty good). Then it all went down hill.

Various technical problems - Stardock Central messing up, can't make news items via our internal news syndication system, and other minor mishaps.

And then the contract negotations with publishers on one of our upcoming games. I'm faced with some unpleasant choices. Got one offer with a huge advance on royalties but one that pretty much assumes we won't ever see any additional royalties due to the way the deal is structured. And it would demand that we give up a lot of control over the game which we normally don't do (on GalCiv we took care of the on-line support, sold teh game directly, and put out lots of updates).  The other deal lets us have that freedom but have a much more modest advance and is from a smaller publisher so it won't likely sell anywhere near as many copies.

But negotiations are always tense and when you're dealing with six figure payments, they're quite intense. I feel exhausted and demoralized since I just don't know what the right path to do is. It's the classic freedom/less money vs. less freedom/money scenario. And it's easy for me to answer for myself what I'd choose but I have to think of the welfare of our employees and our customers and frankly, our customer community.