To think that five years ago, Kip and I came together and promised our lives to one another.  Many of the people that follow this blog were in attendance that day.  It was a warm and blustery day that ended rather cool.  But I had a good time, and I hope that Kip did too! :)

I wanted to make this post as a retrospective on the past five years that I have spent with my husband.  A lot has happened over the years.  I didn’t link back to all previous posts I’ve made on this site, because there would have been a lot of them, so I’m just going to list the major events that have transpired as I remember them.  Please be advised: there is a lot of text here!

We spent our first week together visiting Hawaii, and had a marvelous time in the sun, sand, and sea.  We also enjoyed it from the air in a helicopter ride, that neither of us could fully enjoy due to motion sickness. Kip came home with a wounded foot after a snorkeling accident on the second day.

The next month Kip got to experience helping my family with a yard sale at my parents’ house, and was amazed at the crazies that come out at five in the morning and don’t allow you to fully set up the sale before they totally decimate the merchandise.

In June of 2005 we nearly got in a fight at Carowinds while waiting in line for the Borg.  It was quite terrifying at the time, but now, to look back on it is pretty funny.  I’m proud of my brother-in-law, who was brave enough to stand up for us when people tried to jump the line, when it wasn’t moving.

The month of July didn’t bring many exciting events, just a lot of reviews by my husband.  Things like movies, video games, and radio stations.  Not very exciting stuff.

August, however, was a pretty big month because we found out that our family would be increasing in number by 1.  We were going to be gaining a puppy that was left on Kip’s mom’s front door step.  We lost her a month later to a heart condition that was terminal.  It was a very sad thing to go through.  We then were able to adopt another dog, Punky, that we still have today, she turns five sometime this month.

Sometime in November Kip decided that he needed to reconnect with his stick figure days, and pulled out all his old drawings.  I’m not sure I approve, but they are kinda funny.  I also took up heavy-duty baking in all my free time, and created the infamous cupcake turkey army.  I still can’t believe nobody wanted to eat them.

In 2006 Kip learned how to file our taxes, which was a little stressful, but a necessary evil.  We had a winter Olympics in February, which made recording what we watched on tv interesting.  And I went on a job interview in March.

April brought around our first wedding anniversary.  We celebrated by going to the mountain house up on Roan Mountain.  We enjoyed warm fires, and year old wedding cake.  And I got the job that I interviewed for back in March.  Kip bought a new car, the Solara.

The next couple of months are pretty mundane, with Kip talking about computer stuff, and me being excited about getting the complete collection of Shelley Duvall’s Faerie Tale Theatre.  Kip then made a really long review of games and showed off his cubicle at Dassault.  And, we became Aunt Stephanie and Uncle Kip (but it wasn’t mentioned until October).

In September we celebrated Labor Day with my parents at Chimney Rock, and Kip talked some more about computer stuff.  (Have you sensed a pattern on what he talks about a lot!)

October had quite a bit going on with Kip getting excited about the upcoming release of the Nintendo Wii, I made a top 5 list of movies I would want with me if I were stranded on a desert island (in which I waxed romantic at the end), Kip created a MySpace page for some unknown reason, and we made a jack-o-lantern ghost.

The remainder of 2006 went as follows: we went to the Renaissance Fair with my parents, Kip led game time for AWANA at church one Wednesday night when there were apparently no other people available, Kip turned 25, he lost his cell phone while furniture shopping at the Hickory Furniture Mart (and later found it, Thank God), my car was broken into while I was at work and my purse with my cell phone was taken, the police called us late that night to tell us they caught the guys that did it and had my purse and cell phone in custody (again, Thank God), and Kip got a Wii for Christmas!!

2007 came in with nothing too exciting happening.  Kip talked a lot about programming stuff, and video game stuff.  I complained about mandatory work, that isn’t work, but menial labor.  Then we went to Florida for spring break to visit the newest addition to our extended family.

Our second anniversary was spent at home that year, but I got Kip the most awesome gift ever.  He was graced with his very own Kip Bobble Head.

May started with Kip complaining about filters on different programs, and me telling everybody about falling down the stairs on Easter Sunday and ruining two pairs of shoes.  The month ended with Kip warning people to watch what they say in airports.

The summer had several gaming highlights including us beating Super Paper Mario, and a 5 year old impressing Kip with his gaming skills.  I quit my job, and we bought our first house.  Kip continued blogging about LOST (which he had done several times previously on the blog).  Kip then had a crazy week in which our air conditioning went out in our new home and he got rear-ended on his way home from work.  The summer ended with us announcing our “big news” and Kip sharing quite a lot of his violent stick figure art with the world.

The year ended with Kip going on a business trip to Seattle, us finding out that we were going to have a bouncing baby girl the following spring, Kip and I both had birthdays, the carbon monoxide detector went off in the house, and we decorated for our first Christmas in our very own home.

The year 2008 began with the return of American Gladiators on tv, Kip realizing that Dane Cook is not nearly as funny as he used to be, and us taking our babymoon to Atlanta.  Kip also reviewed some games and determined that we would be traveling to see the full lunar eclipse in 2017.

March of 2008 brought Emma Leigh Robinson into the world and our lives.  She has been a true blessing to both Kip and myself.  For those of you that don’t remember, her arrival was a bit traumatic, but well worth it.  Looking back, I’m thankful that we were able to learn so much with her and help prepare ourselves for her little brother, who will be joining the family in mid-July of this year.

After Emma’s birth we posted a lot about her, and Kip did some more programming stuff.  For my first Mother’s Day, Kip bought me a brand new Honda CR-V, which I still love today.

Over the summer, Kip programed some more, there was stuff on video games and Facebook, Emma had her first beach trip (she didn’t like the water), and we went back to Florida.  The summer Olympics took place in Beijing, and USA did a pretty good job in the swimming events.  By the end of the summer, Emma had gone swimming at her Mimi’s house, and started eating “solid” foods.  It also held the life changing information that Kip’s current employer was closing the Charlotte branch in six months.  It was yet to be learned which layoff he would be included in.

The fall included a nice date night, and Emma going to the polls for her first voting experience.  We also posted quite a few videos of Emma growing, developing, and being really cute.

January 2009 brought snow, and Emma got to go sledding with her daddy.  February had Emma learning to walk, and Kip going on a mission trip to Matamoros, Mexico with our church.

March brought Kip looking for a new job since his would be ending at the end of the month, and his new use for all those business cards they gave him.  Emma also had a pretty big milestone when she turned 1.

Thankfully, Kip was hired for a new job in May, so we didn’t have to go into the unknown world of unemployment for very long.  Before he started, we took a family vacation to Myrtle Beach, and Emma had a blast in the lazy river at the resort.

During last summer, Kip got to experience the guy that sells meat out of a freezer strapped in the bed of his pick-up truck.  We also made another trip to the beach, this time with Kip’s extended family.  The summer ended with me going to the first planning meeting for my 10 year high school reunion.

In the fall and winter of 2009, Emma went trick-or-treating for the first time, and was quite the hit among the other parents and groups we passed or visited.  Kip also realized that he was getting old while I helped throw a wedding shower for my little sister.  My sister got married, and we had Christmas with my family at the beach.  We also found out that we were expecting our second child before the end of the year.

Although 2010 has barely begun, some things have happened since it began.  I was curious if anybody had any old wive’s tales that would help predict the gender of the newest Robinson, and Kip learned that teaching Emma her pronouns was going to be a challenge.  We also had more snow, and therefore more snow fun with Emma and her penguin sled.

Kip quit watching the Simpsons and found out that there is another him in the world.  A second winter Olympics started and ended since we’ve been married, and this time we did pretty well in downhill skiing and speed skating.

In the last month, we found out that the next Robinson will in fact be a little boy to be named Grayson Matthew Robinson, and Emma had her second birthday.

I can’t believe so much has happened or that the time has gone by so quickly.  I’m so thankful for all the fun times and many blessings we have had together.  I’m sure most of you found this post rather boring, but I had a lot of fun going back through all the things that have happened since we got married five years ago.  The day is almost over, so I guess I’ll go to bed since I have another busy day tomorrow, and lots more to do before our next big milestone gets here.

Last week I did something quite significant. I told my DVR to stop recording The Simpsons. Can you believe the show has been running for twenty years? That’s crazy! Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to care about the show lately. My DVR would record it, but I usually wouldn’t watch it until there came one of those rare days when we generally didn’t have anything to do. Then I’d sit down and try to get caught up on Simpsons episodes. I say “try” because only about fifty percent of the time would I actually be able to watch the whole episode. The other half of the time the show was delayed because of some sporting event that I couldn’t care less about, which means at best I could see the beginning of the episode.  In fact, just such a thing happened when I went to watch the 20th anniversary special, which I had heard was very good. This was when I finally decided to give up on the show.

So far in this post, I’ve done a lot of complaining. While complaining a highly popular sport on the internet, I’m going to try to spend the rest of this post reminiscing fondly.

I was exactly eight years and one month old on December 17, 1989. I have no idea what I was doing that Sunday evening, but I know I wasn’t watching the first episode of this new cartoon on Fox called The Simpsons. Before long, everyone knew who Bart Simpson was. I knew that Bart’s show was one of those shows that I wasn’t allowed to watch. It’s actually quite strange, by today’s standards, to think that this show was ever controversial. Especially the first season or two. I mean, the family even went to church and there’s usually some kind of “everybody hugs” moment at the end of the show. What’s even stranger, though, is to consider that there would be no Fox News today if it weren’t for Bart Simpson’s popularity.1

Once when I was in fourth grade I decided to sneak a peek at this forbidden show. It was Homer Defined, the episode where Homer causes a meltdown unrequested fission surplus at Springfield Nuclear Power Plant. That episode aired on October 17, 1991, but I could have been watching a rerun of it. I didn’t see what was so great about the show, but I only saw a few minutes of the show before turning it off and going back in the living room for fear of being caught watching this show I wasn’t supposed to watch. The part I saw was where Professor Frink showed a diagram of concentric circles and explained that “These unfortunate people [in the center circle] will be instantly killed.  This circle, which I am sad to say we are in, will experience a slower, considerably more painful death.”

The first episode that I really watched in entirety was The Front, the one where Bart and Lisa write an Itchy & Scratchy cartoon and submit it in their grandfather’s name. In the cartoon, as I recall, Itchy sends Scratchy to heaven, either by killing him or by knocking him upward very far. Itchy arrives through Elvis Presley’s floor, with his head going into the TV. Elvis says something like “this show ain’t no good” and shoots the TV screen (and Scratchy). I’m not sure why, but my brother and I thought that was the funniest thing, and we repeated the line over and over. “This show ain’t no good. BANG!”2 That episode aired April 15, 1993, but we were watching it in syndication. I was in middle school, so it was probably more like 1995 when I watched it.

After that, The Simpsons became a show that we watched regularly. I think it was on twice a day in syndication, so we got caught up on the first five or six seasons pretty quickly. Over the next decade, I watched pretty much every new episode that aired. There were many great episodes and many forgettable episodes. Two that jump to mind are The Cartridge Family (where Homer gets a gun), and Homer’s Phobia (where Homer has a new friend that he finds out is gay). I continued to watch as the quality of the show went downhill for a while, before it seemed to kind of bottom out in the mid 2000s.

If I had to pick one moment in the show where I might say the show jumped the shark, for me anyway, it would be Million Dollar Abie, which aired on April 2, 2006.3 That was the episode that featured the “diePod.” I remember thinking to myself, “this is the kind of writing I can expect from this show. Who thought this was funny?” It just epitomized every corny joke that I hadn’t laughed at over the last few years.

That’s not to say that there haven’t been any good episodes since then. The funniest episode in years was That 90’s Show, which aired in 2008. The episode featured a flashback to the 90s, hilariously and intentionally shattering the show’s continuity. I mean, the show technically started in the 80s, so a flashback to the 90s should just be a flashback to the first ten seasons of the show! This was combined with many many references to the decade I became a teenager in, so I guess it was designed to appeal to me. I mean, Homer was in a Seattle grunge rock band named “Sadgasm.” The song “Closing Time” was used throughout the episode to represent the entire decade. Weird Al makes a guest appearance. They watch an episode of Seinfeld. I was laughing the whole episode.

Unfortunately, since that time I haven’t kept up with the show. When the show moved to HD, it started requiring a lot more space to have eight episodes of the show sitting on my DVR going unwatched. Maybe the writing isn’t really at fault; maybe I’ve actually grown into and out of the target demographic over the past twenty years. Whatever the reasons may be, I’m now saying goodbye to the show.

Just like the last four years, the beginning of a new year on Vacant Nebula is marked by a look back at the posts of the previous year. I’m not sure if anyone else gets anything out of these posts, but I enjoy making them because there are so many things that I forget about. So let’s see what all we have been posting about.

Early in the year I made several small changes to this site. Then we got some snow. On Valentine’s Day I left Stephanie at home and went to Mexico. While I was gone Emma walked for the first time. Emma continued to get older, eventually celebrating her first birthday.

Two days before Emma’s birthday, though, I was laid off from my job at Dassault Systemés. Which meant I had to do some job hunting, and I had to figure out what to do with my old business cards. Fortunately I found a new job and started after only five weeks of unemployment.

During those five weeks, I started tweeting and went to the beach. I am very thankful that things worked out so well, especially as the unemployment rate continued to rise all year.

As spring turned to summer, I commented on pickup-truck-bed meat dealers and wrote a program to resize desktop wallpapers. I posted a conversation I had with someone at Sprint, who may or may not be a terminator. I also read the best book I’ve ever read.

As autumn arrived, I poked fun at a lady I heard on the radio. (She actually e-mailed me to defend herself, but what she said really reinforced my point.) I told you where to hide your cash, but I guess I should have come up with a place to hide ideas because Coca-Cola stole my idea.

The last few months of the year have been very busy at work, and as a result this blog wasn’t very busy. I did manage to post about Emma’s first Halloween outing, as well as my own aging. To finish out the year I posted some good bad writing and a high-quality video from my new digital camera.

Throughout the year, I reviewed a few things: Prince of Persia, Shadow of the Colossus, Netflix/Blockbuster (part 2), Anathem, and a SumoLounge bean bag chair.  I also gave out some free code: PHP code to create a gradient PNG, Java code to handle arbitrarily large fractions, and (if you don’t mind extracting it from a JAR file) Java code to resize images.

I hope everyone has had a great year and looks forward to twenty-ten!

Today I ran across what might possibly be the only cool Facebook app I’ve ever seen. It takes random Facebook status messages from 2009 and makes a collage of them. I thought mine was very interesting:

In years past I have mentioned my birthday on this blog, in one way or another.  Since I haven’t posted anything since Halloween, I figured why break the tradition.

Over the weekend Stephanie and Emma headed out of town for my sister-in-law’s final wedding shower, which meant I had the house to myself Friday evening and almost all day Saturday.  So what did I do with the time?  I played BioShock until just after midnight, went to bed, then got up at 8:45.  Now, compare this to the Kip of six years ago, when I would play Smash Bros. until 3am, go to bed, and maybe set an alarm clock if I would need to get up by eleven the next day.  So the following has changed: I go to bed earlier and get up earlier.  The following has remained the same: I love video games.  So I can only conclude that decades from now, when I get some time to myself, I will play video games till seven or maybe even eight, go to bed, wake up at five, have a glass of prune juice, and fire up whatever latest and greatest murder simulator the world has to offer.

Last weekend, Kip, Emma, and I went to Laurinburg because it was time for the first planning committee meeting for my 10 year high school reunion.  I decided that since I didn’t live that far away, I might see if I could help any in the planning of this shindig.  Anyway, I went to the meeting not really knowing what all was required in the planning of a class reunion.  I found out that it is just like planning for a wedding reception, and I’ve already done that once, so maybe I can be a bit of help.  We discussed possible locations for having the party, when we would have it, what all we would do that weekend for activities, and all the not so fun logistics.  I think our next meeting might be a little more fun since we will actually be doing stuff instead of just talking about stuff.  I know that this post isn’t that exciting or entertaining, but not much is really going on with me and Emma lately to be post worthy, and I hadn’t posted in a very long time and thought I would just share on this little milestone in my life.

Some facts about my high school:

• My graduating class had 342 students

• There is only one high school in all of Scotland County

• I think I only know about 50 of those students

• There were only 3 people at the meeting and one other person on a cell phone speakerphone

That is about it, maybe something else exciting will happen soon, and make a better post than this unexciting update...

In longstanding Vacant Nebula tradition, I am kicking off the new year with a look back at what happened here over the last year.1

We came into the year in the midst of a writer’s strike, which allowed us to experience new reality shows.  Then, we decided to formally provide a Vacant Nebula Statement Of (dis)Integrity.  (I’m still waiting on free stuff to start flowing in.)  We also came into the year with a pregnant Stephanie, and we went on a final just-the-two-of-us vacation in Atlanta. Then, I had a few months to kill until Emma arrived, so I tried my hand at drawing maps from memory, which didn’t go so well.  I broke a delivery at work, which led to a few less-than-awesome meetings before everything was sorted out.  I studied eclipses, and now I have plans for August 21, 2017.  Mark your calendars!  I also got my name mentioned by (a blog hosted by) The New York Times, and made a few observations about the upcoming Firefox 3. (Wow, it feels like I have always had Firefox 3, but it was only nine months ago!)

And then life changed when Stephanie decided she was tired of being pregnant and ready to be a mom, something that comes with its own holiday.  I wrote some words and posted some pictures concerning the momentous arrival of our very own Emma Leigh.  Over the year, Stephanie would make a few posts about the experiences of motherhood.  Of course, life must go on and eventually we got some more uneventful posts, like when someone I’m almost kind of related to was briefly on national television, or that time I tried out Facebook and learned that I actually don’t hate it.  Then I said something controversial and soon after retracted it (the first and thus far only time anything posted here has been retracted).

We went on our annual beach trip, and took some photos while we were there.  Over the summer I delighted you with some awesome stuff, and then to get everyone ready for international athletics I posted a schedule of the Beijing Olympics.  True story: if I look at the statistics for number of visitors to this site, and August 8 or August 9 are included in the graph, the rest of the graph is a flat line rounded to zero.  Apparently having a page titled “2008 Beijing Summer Olympics TV Schedule” posted the day the Olympics started will nab you quite a few hits from search engines.

As the summer cooled down, so did the economy.  I found out I won’t have my job much longer, and gas prices soared to new heights, leading to awkward conversations about gas.  Then it was time for an election which later inspired some reflection.  Then to finish out the year, I commented on my long-overdue completion of the Narnia books and took a long Christmas vacation.

Along the way, I also reviewed a few games, and posted way more pictures and videos of Emma than would be practical to list here.  And I guess that’s all that’s worth mentioning from this most recent trip around the sun.  May you all have a happy new year!

I just watched a TV show (Chuck) which featured a sepia-toned flashback to the summer of 1990.  Although I was only eight years old at the time, I distinctly remember the world consisting of more colors than brown.

For the first time in Vacant Nebula history, I have retracted a blog post.  Upon further consideration (and a little pleading from Stephanie), I realized that the post might cause this website to show up as a result for certain search queries.  Let’s just say, Dateline might have been interested in anyone who came to the site and was disappointed that the link did not, in fact, point to the type of content that was claimed.  In addition, I do not want to attract that kind of attention to a website that has pictures of my daughter.

Fortunately, no one has yet arrived at my site by means of such queries.  For anyone interested, here are the top 20 search engine queries that brought visitors to this website in May, 2008:

That last one is a little weird though.  Yikes!

I’ve played a lot of games lately, so I thought I’d post some quick mini-reviews for anyone who cares.  Without further ado...

Metroid Prime 3: Corruption
All in all a pretty fun game, although something just doesn’t feel quite right.  Looking back on the Metroid Prime games, I think that the first one was the best.  But I’m not sure why, because I played 1 & 2 back-to-back last summer, and I thought 2 was far superior when played that way.  But when they aren’t fresh on my mind, I think the first one was better!  I can’t figure out why, since those thoughts contradict each other.  Some other thoughts: this is also the easiest of the Prime games, and the presence of voice actors was a little weird to me.  Finally, I have to mention the two super-cool unlockables.  One is ship bumper stickers, which means it looks at games saved in your Wii system memory and puts their logo on your ship.  So there’s a giant Zelda triforce on the top of my ship, and a Paper Mario head on the side of my ship.  And the other cool unlockable is a Samus bobble-head doll with your Mii’s head on it.  Normally I wouldn’t think seeing my head on a woman’s body was very cool, but I’ll make an exception in this case.  You can see both of these unlockables on your tubes.

Super Mario Galaxy
This game was just great.  I’m not sure how else to say it.  As you probably already know, the game takes place on micro planets that you can run around.  Playing around with gravity is incredibly trippy.  There are even a few places where a planet is small enough that a long jump can literally put you into orbit!  I wonder what Isaac Newton would say if he were alive to see this game?  Stephanie also enjoyed the commitment-free 2-player co-op.  She was able to help sometimes by freezing enemies.  In fact this was so helpful it felt like cheating sometimes, especially because she could just hold bullet bills in place, then I could take my time.  The game does have a few bad points.  Namely, Spring Mario.  Fortunately, you only have to use Spring Mario about 4 or 5 times in the entire game (in fact, I don’t think I ever used it until after the first time I beat the game).

Guitar Hero 3: Legends of Rock
I’ve played Guitar Hero games a few times, but this was the first one that I actually owned and spent significant time on.  I think my skill might have plateaued at can-beat-nearly-everything-on-hard-and-a-few-things-on-expert.  Unfortunately the Wii version of this game had some problems, like the fact that it only outputs sound in mono.  This is a music game, how did that get past the QA process??  Another annoyance is the lack of co-op quickplay feature (not that this is a huge deal to me, personally, since I only have the one guitar).  For the 360 and PS3 versions of the game, a patch was released to add that feature, but of course the Wii isn’t quite that capable.  Oh well.  I just put my disc in the mailbox this morning to get a replacement disc that does have stereo sound, but they said it could be 3-4 weeks, and I might be quite busy with other things in 3-4 weeks, so it may be a while before I get time to play GH3 again.

Prince of Persia: Rival Swords
As you may know, this is the third game in the Prince of Persia: Sands of Time trilogy.  (Well technically Two Thrones was the third game, and this is a port of the third game.)  The first game in this trilogy was just amazing.  One of the best video games I’ve ever played.  Unfortunately Ubisoft rushed out the sequels without giving them the same love.  The Warrior Within was a train wreck of a game.  In this game they’ve gotten back on course a bit, but it still seems to fall short of the first game.  But I have to admit I’m only partway through the game.  The Wii controls are a little tacked on, but they aren’t really bad.  They are comparable to Twilight Princess (where Wii controls were also tacked on).  Somehow the graphics seem worse to me than they were in the original game, but maybe I’m just not remembering it correctly.  I’ll have to go back and see sometime.

Okay I guess that’s all I’ve been playing in the last several months.  Until next time, take care America.