Well counting the graphs along the side it has been about nine months without writing a Directions and for some pages have gone longer than that without any updates.

I'm pretty sure I just shut myself down with so many project on my mind from Neverwinter to Direct X Programming. Also being married and trying to work full time and playing racquetball a few times a week is not  always easy.

I feel that I have fallen behind and no longer close to current with HTML and other skills. So I've been thinking about introducing XML into Intervue Digest and move that forward with something simple but useful.

A lot of times, we can spend time developing something, but in the end doesn't add much for all that effort. Site DB has been worth the effort and I hope to expand the way these pages are created with a new parser program. The problem with that project is it feels like too much programming for something that's pretty easy to do.

Direct X programming has finally picked up again, during the long Holiday weekend, I sat down and starting going over some Frustum articles and added some basic stuff to a console program using DirectX objects. I expanded it this morning to semi-work with a Camera object that I have. It's just hard to validate the results and trust it, so I felt like I did enough with that today and moved on to Intervue.

I think I'm starting to gain some confidence in Mathematics as a result of this Game Math class I've been taking at Game Institute. I feel lost most of the time and the recorded lectures sometimes help, but sometimes I'm just blown away by the equations and stuff, but I'm not going to quit. I have learned some really cool things so far.

With another year coming to a close, most of the graphs posted here. :-) I'm a bit disappointed with my efforts to push the site forward. When I look at some of these graphs and I see last year doing better than this year, it's not something to be proud of and makes me think if this dream will ever come to reality.

It's obvious from the graphs that I don't do Intervue Digest for a living and I'm not entirely sure I would like to do just this for income. I would get pretty bored just looking at sites all day. I do enjoy contributing something to the web and I've been doing Intervue Digest for so long that it's integrated into my life.

Of course, I think it will be a long time before I start printing Intervue Digest on paper like I did. That was a great deal of work every month, even for seven subscribers, well it could be a hundred and it would still be a good deal of work to write everything up. Especially during that time when I was surfing the web with a text only browser over a 28.8 modem line. Technology is great, but I don't believe there's anything to beat Writer's block and lack of time. It's my own demons that keep me away regardless of today's technology.

Like I said, I've been playing racquetball at work. I'm not a very good player, but I do try and I've been reading books and practicing. It's been a few months and I've bought all the technology: a good racquet, shoes, gloves, balls, eye guards, even a backpack.

As I said, technology can only do so much. It's a mindset that keeps me hitting the ball and getting points. I find myself when the score is like 10 to 4 or some other near defeat or trailing score that I give up. I don't leave the court, but I might as well have.

My moves become sluggish and instead of pushing to get points I kind of withdraw and let the server keep getting points and I kick myself without avail to do something end his rally and start serving again.

So I hope my digression into racquetball sheds some light on my problems with Intervue Digest and my lack of action this year. I can't blame everything on getting married, even though to date nothing has changed my life more.

One more racquetball thought before I close, I realize I have no chance to write until I reach the end of the graphs. I play double racquetball league with a friend from work we made it into the playoffs. We lost two games and won two. The two we won weren't really challenging and were easy wins, but the loses were bad. 15 to 2, 15 to 7. So maybe I let my partner down and didn't play my best.

Now I'm angry and really want to win the finals. I don't think about being #1. What I really want is my partner's respect and trust to keep playing with me and developing our friendship and our teamwork. I want the same thing from people who visit my website. I would like your trust and respect about the topics I cover. So I'll double down and do what I can push ID forward.

Well my wife and I plan to start having children next year, so we'll see what happens when we cross that bridge. Wow and I thought getting married was a change.

Thanks for reading,
Joe Delgado